


Ghosts in Your Blood

by marizousbooty



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Angst, Curses, Fluff, Gift Exchange, M/M, Witch AU, everyone is a witch even you, i dont say it but its in california like literally all of my fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 16:03:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 40,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16453001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marizousbooty/pseuds/marizousbooty
Summary: Keith heads for a little beach town in search of the most powerful witch of the generation to break a curse that was placed on him. She can help him, but it will take until the next full moon for her to break it. Until then, Keith can't help but falling for another local witch.





	1. The Beach Town

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! This is for a Halloween gift exchange for the wonderfully handsome Jasper! I hope you enjoy this, I've been screaming at beep and deafy about this ever since beep gave me the prompts back in like, july or whatever.  
> Like, the vampire/werewolf fic, I've been wanting to write a witch fic for forever and I finally had the inspiration and a plot to write about. The original story was scrapped and redrawn several times and beep had to sit through all if it lmao.  
> thank you so much deafy for putting up with my nagging and editing this for me, and beep for listening to my rambling. ur da best.  
> Like FYI the doc is titled "ya got ghosts in yer bones" and beep begged me to keep it exactly as is but i got an Aesthetic, bro  
> Happy Halloween, Jasper! Stay spooky, my dude.

The heat from the bus window burned Keith’s neck and arm through his clothes. He’d lost the feeling in his butt a while ago, and an ache settled deeply into his spine from the hard seats. Almost there, he’d tell himself over and over, almost there and he could stand and let all the blood rush back into his ass. 

To his left, across the bus, was the drying, mountain landscape with weak splashes of pale green trying to survive the summer. Out the window at his warmed shoulder, was the glittering blue sea. He was far away from home, where he lived alone in a little shack in the desert with only a small watering hole to drink and bathe with, mirages in the distance teasing him. He would use the land for his own craft; the bleached white rocks and bones, the sage and agave. Unfortunately, something set him on an unwanted journey. It’s been about a day’s travel getting over the mountain and up the coast to this seaside town to receive the help he needed.

Over a week ago, he’d receive a knife with a heavy duty curse on it. He used everything he could think of to try and remove the dark miasma soaked into it’s very core. He tried to smoke it out, burn it, drench it in blessed water, and used an array of objects to try and soak the miasma from it. Nothing worked. It was only then, after he had exhausted every object, when he started thinking it might not be cursed, but possessed by an ill-intended spirit did the miasma finally lift.

In a ritual under the full moon, he made a circle in the dirt and placed candles in the four cardinal directions, lined the circle with turquoise to keep the bad mojo contained in one area, and his talisman dangling over the knife clasped in his right hand and his Grimoire perched in his left.

It had gone off without a hitch, or so he thought. The miasma lifted, a cloying cloud that made the night air feel even colder. But it didn’t go away. The ritual was supposed to purify and banish the possession, not lift the curse up and slam it into Keith.

His magick has been locked since. Whatever that was- demon, foul spirit, or really ugly curse- it filled Keith’s blood with oil and hands with lead. His vision would blur if he didn’t concentrate on focusing, and his ears were almost always ringing. The worst part was that every bit of his magick was blocked off by this gross, sludgy miasma. There was no way he could break a curse on  _ himself  _ without magick, especially one this dark and powerful.

A local had told him to try going to Allura, who lived on the other side of mountain and is one of the most powerful witches of the generation. Given nothing but a town and a name, he packed a bag and got on a bus headed to the little beach town.

He was dropped off near the town center, across the street from what looked like the city hall and a church. Even if he couldn’t see the ocean from where he stood, the dull sound of it still washed through the air like a backtrack. The air was so much different here than his home in the desert, wetter and cooler. The sun was still bright and piercing through the air.

He got a late lunch at a cafe with a black cat on the sign and really good cannolis. The server told him Allura lived on the outskirts of town in a large, peach colored Victorian styled mansion where she stayed and conducted her business. The directions given were thorough, and took Keith on a two mile trek back up the mountain. 

July wasn’t terribly hot here, the sea breeze kept everything to a cooler temperature and the humidity was reasonable, but the hills sucked. He was used to his flat patch of land with the town a mile trek west on a straight shot road, not this hellishly steep incline.

His calves burned by the time he made it to the cemetery where he needed to turn right on. The worst part about the curse, besides the whole no magick ordeal, was that it seeped his stamina and left him wheezing if he did anything remotely active. It was like the sludge in his blood was weighing his whole body down. He wanted to sleep all the time now, but he couldn’t let himself do that. Almost immediately after turning the corner, he spotted a towering, peach colored building between the trees. The hill sloped upward, a gravel path darted off the main road to the right. He took that down through the trees up to the front of the house.

Just as described, it was big and peach with white trim. The house was built on a slope with three floors, the garage being on the first but there was a wooden, multilayer staircase that led up to a deck and to the second floor of the house where the front door was. A wooden plaque in curly script read “ _ Altea’s Magick Shop” _ . A Roman styled statue of a naked woman sat on a pedestal by the staircase leading up to the deck.

There were chairs and tables on the deck, with potted herbs and flowers and a couple more of those naked statues of women. Keith raised his first to knock on the dark wooden door before it was thrown open in his face. A woman with wild blonde hair pulled into thick braids and bright eyes was on the other side, she gave a nod to Keith before she pushed passed him and ran down the stairs back toward the main road. 

“Uh, hello?” Keith called. He hoped to god that wasn’t Allura running out of her house, leaving him - a complete stranger- at the entrance of her wide open door.

“Come in!” A delicate voice called from within.

The front walkway was laid in marble and had a crystal chandelier dangling over his head, to his left was a staircase, his right lead to a sitting room where a woman stood from her plush leather armchair. Her hair was the color of starlight and skin like rich umber, but that’s all he was able to see before she leaped to her feet and shoved him by the shoulders toward the door screaming.

“OUT! GET OUT! YOU’RE DRENCHED IN MIASMA I CAN’T LET YOU IN HERE!” She hollered. He was shunted out the door and stumbled into a deck chair. “Stay here, I need to purify the place and get something to purify you.”

“Uh, I tried that,” Keith said. His words went unheard as she ran back into the house, her feet thundering up the stairs.

She came back moments later with several items in hand. She slammed an incense board down on the little side table in the foyer and lit it, the heady smell making it’s way outside to where Keith sat patiently. Next, she ran around throwing open all the windows in the front of the house as wide as they could go, ringing a little, gold bell two times in each room as she went. After, she lit a bundle of dried sage and waved it through the air of the whole foyer and the front room, focusing heavily on the doorway Keith had stood. 

When she finished, she stepped out and let the smoke drift over him. “Pardon me, you radiate such a foul energy it made me worried about my home. I am Allura, and I assume you need some help.”

Keith nodded. That oily feeling coating his blood and bones cringed at the sage smoke drifting around him. It wasn’t gone, just pushed down. His skin felt cleaner for the first time since that stupid curse was dropped on him. Well, as clean as it could be after traveling an equivalent of ten hours on a bus and briefly sleeping under a tree in the middle of the desert. “I’m Keith. I’m from over the mountain, and I was told you could help me.”

“That I can.” Allura took a seat across from him, placing the burning sage on the glass of the table next to him to let it burn out. “Tell me about this curse, and I can see what I can do.”

He explained how he acquired the knife to purify, and described the different rituals he used to get the curse out originally, the night of the full moon and how the curse lifted and latched itself onto him, effectively blocking his magic. 

“Did you anger someone?” Allura asked when he finished.

“Probably? I’m not exactly easy to get along with. But this was given to me by a customer.”

“Yes, and a curse won’t just latch onto anybody. If it’s locked in an object, it will either be purified or latch itself onto the intended victim.”

A breeze rifled by, blowing the smoke away from Keith. “Thace wouldn’t do that to me, he must have not known.”

“How did the knife get the curse?”

“He found one of his knives rattling in the drawer.” Keith tugged the knife out of his bag and unwrapped it. The curved blade glinted in the sunlight peeking through the trees overhead, purified and just a regular blade now. “He went to bed the night before with it fine, in fact he used it to carve out some wood from an acacia tree, and put it away only to be woken up by it the next morning.

“Where did he get the acacia?” She asked really good questions.

Keith shrugged. “An old tree that was burned from lightning not to far from his place.”

She hummed in thought. “The curse could have been jumping from one object to another to get to you. It could be linked back to that tree. How far did you come again?”

“By bus. About ten hours from here.”

“I have a car, but that still sounds like a hassle to drive back when you just got here.” She stood, her long, lavender skirt flowing back down around her ankles. “We will need to do some more research into this and find out everything we can about the nature of this curse before we can even think to break it. No offense, I don’t want you to rest here tonight, due to the awful miasma that surrounds you. I run a business, I don’t need that kind of energy obstructing it. I will call a friend and see if they can take you in.”

“I don’t- it’s okay, really. I was going to get a motel.”

“Save your money, you’ll need it to pay me.”

Keith gulped. 

Allura went back inside and came back a few minutes later with a tray of tea and snacks. The cookies were only lightly sweet, much to Keith’s disappointment. He sort of had a sweet tooth, always buying those frosted sugar cookies when he could. He tasted the tea at least, noting the lavender and rosemary with a hint of honey. He dumped more honey and sugar in it. 

Allura daintily stirred in more honey into her own tea, one hand holding up the saucer of tea and the other the spoon while she cradled her phone with her shoulder and ear.

She spoke softly into the phone, Keith tried to make himself busy by admiring the dainty tea set. The porcelain cups were painted with little pink roses and lined in a gold around the details, the saucer had a large rose in the middle of the dent where the cup sat. The teapot matched, but it was tall and slim at the top with a long sprout. 

He can’t do this. Tea sets were pretty, but he would honestly much rather listen into what Allura was saying.

“Are you sure? I can ask him, but I think he has Hunk staying with him already. Really? I’ll ask. Thank you very much, I’ll call if I need help.”

She hung up and dialed another number. “Hello, Lance? Oh, Hunk! How are you?” She chatted with that Hunk person before she explained the situation with Keith.

‘’Oh perfect! Are you sure about that?” She paused to listen then laughed. “You two have fun, I’ll bring him around after tea later, oh? No, I don’t mind but are you sure? I’ll ask him. I’ll see you soon, have fun! Tell Lance I said hello.”

She hung up and turned to Keith. “My friend Lance said he would be glad to take you in, he currently has Hunk staying with him, but he’s going to leave tomorrow anyway. The two of them are going out to dinner in town, and if you’re hungry we can join them and then they can take you home with them.”

Keith shook his head. “I actually ate before coming here, but if you’re hungry I don’t mind.”

“Nonsense, I have a leftover fettuccine in my fridge I want to eat before it goes bad.”

Allura went in to get her food and Keith moved to one of the lounge chairs to possibly catch a nap before that Lance guy arrived. Allura came back out not long after to sit quietly at the table with her fettuccine and a glass of white wine. As Keith napped, lulled to sleep by the cool breeze and the rustling of the trees, Allura moved over and lounged out next to him with a romance novel to read. She didn’t have to wait outside with him, but he appreciated the sentiment. 

He awoke to the sound of car doors slamming shut and footsteps coming up the wooden staircase. A loud laugh broke the peace.

“They’re here,” Allura said, placing a bookmark in her book and standing to greet them. Keith pulled himself up, trying to reiterate himself from sleeping for so long. The curse always left him extra sluggish after waking up, locking up his limbs and throwing his sense of balance off if he didn’t move for too long. 

“Hey Allura- whoa.” The smaller of the two guys stumbled back, wrinkling his nose at the thick layer of miasma surrounding Keith. “You weren’t kidding.”

“You get used to the cloying aura of death after a while,” Allura said.

“I’m Hunk, you must be Keith,” the bigger of the two guys, Hunk, extended his hand. Keith shook it, surprised by how gentle it was despite the absolute thickness of Hunk’s arms. 

“The name’s Lance.” The shorter guy shook Keith’s hand a little more firm than Hunk’s had been. “You’ll be staying in my spare room.”

“Lance lives down by the beach,” Allura explained. “We feel the ocean air will help sooth the side effects of the curse.”

“I’m a sea witch who specializes in healing, and Hunk here is a kitchen witch with a knack for herbal remedies.” Lance jabbed a thumb toward Hunk when he mentioned him. “We’ll help ease your troubles until Allura can get rid of that nasty curse from you.”

Sea witches, from what Keith knew, were gentle people and most often healers. He felt a little better at the idea of a healer and an herbalist looking out for him.

A thought struck him. “Wait, hold up. How long is this going to take? And how much?”

“Well, we can’t do the actual ritual to break the curse until the next full moon,” Allura explained, resting a cool hand on Keith’s shoulder. “I’m pretty powerful, but not  _ that  _ powerful. We’ll need to harness Her power in order to completely break the curse without any repercussions. There’s a lot of prep beforehand to determine how we’re going to break it. We only have one shot at this.”

“How-how much is this going to cost me?” Keith asked weakly.

“Hm, I’m unsure of the exact cost for the materials we’ll need, but with the time of all three of us and a rough estimate for supplies, I’d say about four hundred,” Allura said.

“ _ Four hundred?!”  _ Keith yelped. He’s  _ never  _ charged anything close to that much before.

“Each. So technically, about twelve hundred.”

Keith took a step back and collapsed onto the lounge chair. “Friends and family discount?” His voice was so thin.

Lance snickered behind his hand.

“I’ll consider. I don’t like you enough to give a discount” Allura procured a document and a rose gold fountain pen. “This is still a business, so I will need you to sign here in case you lose a limb or the ability to feel joy ever again, you won’t be able to sue us.”

Keith posed the pen over the document, reading over the fine print. The wretched curse made his eyesight weaker, making it difficult to decipher the looped writing. “Is it really twelve hundred?”

“No, you get a fellow witch discount. It’ll be closer to five hundred.”

“Fifteen hundred!?” Keith snapped the fountain pen in half, ink splattering up his arm and a little on his face. 

Lance broke down laughing hysterically, slapping Hunk’s arm and howling into the trees with mirth.

Keith officially hated Lance.

“Five hundred dollars total, plus county tax.” Allura cracked a smile and plucked the broken pen from Keith’s clenched fist. She clapped her hands over the broken pen and handed it back, good as new. “I’m afraid I can’t do anything about the ink, but hand sanitizer should do the trick.”

He timidly signed his name at the bottom of the contract. As soon as he finished dating it, the paper and pen floated out of his grasp and into Allura’s outstretched hand.

“Now that that’s settled, go head home with Lance. The room is already set up.” Allura ushered them down the patio steps and bid them farewell, practically shoving Keith into the back seat of a dirty pick up truck and slamming the front passenger’s seat into his knees. Lance spoke softly with Allura briefly before he blew her a kiss and climbed into the passenger seat.

“You alright back there, Keith?” Hunk asked, climbing into the driver’s seat and turning to check on Keith. “Lance could pull his seat up for you if you don’t have enough room.”

“Probably,” Keith said. “My knees are numb.”

Lance, like the dick he is, knocked his seat back further with a short laugh before he tugged it forward. Fuck the whole “sea witch’s are gentle souls”, this guy was a jackass. 

Another unfortunate side effect of the curse, was that Keith now easily got motion sickness. The bus was gross and hellish, taking the long windy roads up and back down made Keith actually stumble off at the nearest rest stop and throw up in some bushes. Being crammed in the back of a car going down a hilly road was making Keith’s world spin and his stomach protest. It was hard to breath, his limbs went weak and heavy as if it was filled with jelly now. He tugged at the seat belt to alleviate the pressure off his midsection, a sweat breaking out at his temple.

Lance decided to roll down his window, and Hunk did the same to get a good wind going in here. It felt nice, less suffocating. It cooled the sweat beading on his face. 

“Want some ginger candy?” Lance turned and offered a bag of crystallized, beige lumps. Keith shakily took the biggest one and popped it into his mouth.

“Thanks,” Keith said weakly.

“No problem. Curse makes you car sick, or has that always been the case?” Lance asked.

“Curse.” He was too nauseous to speak properly.

Lance took the hint and stayed quite. 

It was a fifteen minute drive from Allura’s to a little residential street off the main road, close enough to the beach where the ocean can be seen between the houses. They pulled up to a little white house with blue shutters and trim and a bright teal door. The fence was old and unpainted, with a wooden arch covered in morning glories budded shut for the day at the entrance that opened up to a path toward the front door.

The whole fence was drowning in nasturtiums, but surrounded by chamomile, larkspur, and bachelor’s buttons. California and red poppies, bushes of rosemary and mint, daffodils, lilacs, stocks of hyacinth and lavender, and roses of every color. A large bustle of white camellias grew in the front corner, spilling flowers over the fence and into the sidewalk. Down the path, Keith counted many more wildly growing flowers and herbs, amazing he was able to tend for them with how messily they grew everywhere. Allura’s were in neat little pots and and boxes as to not overgrow onto the deck. Up by the front door a large honeysuckle bush hugged the porch and dripped onto the patio table. Keith spotted a little dirt path lines with stones that lead to a little secret side area covered by the shade of trees where boxes and pots were planted with a wide variety of herbs. A bar-b-que and a picnic table sat under the willow tree. He felt a little better knowing that his healer and herbalist has access to all these herbs that he couldn’t even dream of attempting to grow out in the desert.

The interior of the house was cozy and filled with natural light from the skylights. A ladder climbed up the wall and spilled to a loft area where Keith spotted a desk. A doorway by the ladder lead to a little bedroom with a twin sized bed and a dresser, another bag already on top of it. A little wooden lantern hung in the corner of the room across from the window. 

“This’ll be your room. Don’t mind the bag, that’s Hunks,” Lance saddled in next to Keith to grab the bag. “He’s gonna sleep with me tonight so don’t worry. The sheets were already changed.”

The turquoise blankets duvet looked very inviting, but Keith wanted to explore a little bit more before he collapsed. A soft clinking sound drew his attention to the window, where a windchime made of seashells danced in the ocean breeze that filtered through.

In the kitchen, there were more seashell and sea glass windchimes. The place was small, with some herbs placed in neatly labeled jars on a shelf by the sink. A long window by the kitchen table showed off the stone wall and bushes from the side of the house. Back in the sitting room, he found another windchime shaped like a jellyfish by the front door, and a collage of seashells hanging on the wall. He knew people who lived by the beach made sure everyone knew they lived by the beach with the nautical decor, but this was a little ridiculous. He eyed a throw pillow on the couch with a starfish printed on it and the painting of a mermaid sitting on the wall.

Each window and entrance had windchimes by them, and they were going to drive Keith up the wall if he had to stay here three weeks.

“How’d your stomach feel?” Lance came back into the sitting room, a cup of tea in hand. “Hunk made you some tea to help settle it.”

Keith thanked him and took the steaming cup, noting the smell of mint and a spicy hint of ginger. 

“I feel better after stretching my legs, thank you.” Keith plopped down into the couch heavily. With only one sip of tea, he felt his nausea eb away. He sighed into the plush pillows, letting his eyes drift close. He could hear the windchimes dancing in the breeze in the kitchen, where Hunk bustled around banging pots and pans together. “I thought you two already ate.”

“We did.” Lance sat down on the other end of the short couch. “But Hunk insists on feeding you proper food.”

Keith hummed. That was fine. He could probably go for some pasta, he hasn’t had that in ages. 

As if Hunk had read his mind, he made a caprese pasta with a side of bruschetta and popped open a bottle of red wine. They sat around the little corner table in the kitchen, Lance and Hunk eating the bruschetta only, leaving the caprese to Keith.

“Leave the caprese for Keith,” Hunk told Lance.

“Caprese for Keith?” Lance responded over the rim of his wine glass.

“Caprese for Keith.” Hunk nodded.

“Is the caprese for Keith?” Keith joined in.

“The caprese can be for Keith if Keith chooses to,” Lance said.

“I choose the caprese for Keith- hey this is really fucking good, Hunk,” Keith said, practically inhaling his food.

“It should be, I’m a good cook,” Hunk retorted.

Lance snickered. “What kind of kitchen witch would he be if he couldn’t cook?”

“That’s cool, I never met a kitchen witch before, nor a sea witch.” Keith jabbed his fork toward Lance, wiping balsamic vinegar from his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m a desert witch, specialize in curse breaking.”

“And I’ve never met a desert witch!” Hunk exclaimed. “Is it true you guys use animal bones for everything because you have so little resources to use out in the middle of nowhere?” Lance jabbed Hunk’s side with his pointy elbow and gave him a look.

Keith laughed. “There’s actually a lot of things to use out in the desert, you just need to know where to look. Not all desert witches incorporate bones into their magick, but I do. I never kill the birds or snakes, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Kind of like how I use washed up seashells?” Lance pointed out.

“Exactly like that.” Keith wiped his hands on his pants (earning a gasp from Hunk to use the napkin, you heathen) and tugged a necklace out from the collar of his shirt. A short cord with a string of snake bones hung around his collarbones, along with the turquoise beaded necklace and the smokey quartz pendant. 

“Ooh, I have a shell necklace.” Lance tugged up from his chest a little glass ball filled with tiny seashell shards, an aquamarine pendant hung from the same chain.

“I have a bug in amber, does that count?” True to his word, Hunk held up the amber triangle of a pendant, a bee capsulated in the stone. 

“Close enough,” Lance said. 

They finished dinner and went out onto the front deck to watch the sunset, finishing off the bottle of wine and opening a second. Hunk and Lance were really nice and fun to be around, Keith decided. Lance’s assholish behavior is what Keith found out is Lance’s weird, roundabout way to show affection. As the evening wore on and Lance got tipsier, he got less butt-like and more soft, blubbering about how much he loved his friends and family and the beach. Keith was warm and content for the first time in a while, the alcohol taking the edge off the curse and left him feeling warm and fuzzy. Looking over at Lance and Hunk under the waning moon, the crashing waves of the sea not to far off, Keith was reminded of how lonely he was out in his little hut in the desert by himself, especially after Shiro disappeared. 

Around eleven they called it a night. Hunk carried Lance into the master bedroom while Keith trudged into his and collapsed onto the bed. A white Siberian cat with the most startling blue eyes startled awake when Keith turned on the light. It tentatively let Keith pet it’s head with a gentle  _ murp _ before it took off down the hall, sensing Keith wanted his bed. 

The duvet felt wonderful under his exhausted body, weary from traveling so much. He realized offhanded he hasn’t had a shower in probably four days and the desert grime was in every inch of his skin. Remembering the sheets are freshly washed, Keith picked himself up and headed for the bathroom for a quick shower. 

Which was interrupted by Lance stumbling into the bathroom to pee. Which was a little awkward since Keith barely knew the guy, and he was standing butt naked behind a foggy shower door and Lance’s blurred silhouette right next to him and so obviously doing his business. 

“Sorry, this is the only bathroom in this place and I gotta do my business man,” Lance muttered, barely heard over the shower spray.

“Go pee outside, there’s a bunch of trees,” Keith snarked back.

“Ew.” Keith could almost  _ hear  _ Lance twisting his face into an ugly scowl. “I’m gonna do my skincare stuff, so don’t mind me while you wash your balls. When your done, I can loan you a good mask and a moisturizer, no offense but your skin looks thirsty for attention.”

“No thanks, my skin is fine,” Keith said this as he vigorously scrubbed at a weirdly sticky patch on his arm, stuck with dirt and who knows what else. It might be sap he rolled in. 

“Suit yourself.” Lance flushed without warning, turning the water burning hot for a second and pulled a yelp from Keith.

“Asshole,” he grumbled. 

Lance snorted, washing his hands and face in the sink. It was nice, Keith had to admit, sharing a space with someone in such a domestic way. He mentally slapped himself for going gooey for a second there. He just met the guy, is he so desperate for human company he’s starting to project onto the nearest person who shows any semblance of compassion toward him?

He’s still a little buzzed. Lance is really cute, though. Keith’s not blind, he noticed how long Lance’s eyelashes were, the little splash of freckles across his nose and cheeks, the cute upturn of his nose, the quirk of his brow whenever he spoke. His ears were a little big, but Keith thought that was endearing. 

Keith kicked Lance out so he could step out of the shower and rub himself down with a towel before wrapping it around his waist and heading to his room. Lance was waiting outside, a lavender cream drying on his face. Keith might have noticed Lance give his bare chest a once over. 

Collapsing onto bed again, clad in his pajama pants and a clean shirt, he realized he only brought about a weeks worth of clothes, not a whole month. He’d be fine, Lance has a washer. Too tired to unpack his duffle bag into the dresser, he buried himself into the duvet and immediately fell asleep. The feel of the ocean breeze coming through the window cooled his heated skin, the crashing waves reminding him how far away from home he was. 

The days that followed his arrival felt like nothing yet everything was happening. He took the time to explore the area, hiking along the mountain trails and taking a stroll down Main Street to check out the shops. Not far from Lance’s house was a trail through a natural preserve atop a cliff that overlooked the ocean. Most evenings he’d find himself wandering the trails to feel the last rays of sunshine on his skin in the wide open space, then find a bench to watch the golden light disappear beyond the wide sea. Sitting on the wooden bench carved from a piece of driftwood, bathing in dying sunlight, he could feel the curse etching away at him. 

Hunk left early the first morning back to his house, beyond the mountain and high from the sea level. He had given Lance a variety of herbal teas and medicines for Keith to curb the side effects. Every morning before breakfast and after dinner Lance would use his magicked up water, herbs drifting across the surface of the abalone bowl and healing crystals soaking at the bottom, and he would use his wand to trace patterns into the bare skin of Keith’s back. He would mutter under his breath, words Keith knew were to calm the oil filling his blood and fog in his head. The burning cool of the water on his skin left him feeling refreshed and awake, his vision clearing up and constant migraine retreating to a manageable throb in his temples. 

The house, even with just the two of them now, was still filled with noise. Keith was used to the offline silence of his desert hut, broken by the wind scratching his walls and a howl in the distance when the moon was high. Lance’s little sea cottage was filled with wind chimes that would dance in the ocean breeze that filtered through the din of crashing waves and rustling of trees. Lance himself made a lot of noise on his own, humming and muttering under his breath as he worked his magick on clients. He only got a handful of clients daily, which made Keith wonder how Lance got the money to have a house so close to the beach. 

“I make charm infused wind chimes and nautical decor out of seashells and junk I find on the beach and sell it at a local shop,” Lance explained when Keith asked over breakfast one day. “Tourists go nuts over stuff made by locals and are willing to pay a hefty sum of money.” 

“Do you always charm your stuff?” Keith pictures some artistically worn down ship steering wheel mounted on a wall and with a charm on it to ward off evil spirits. 

“Hm most of the time. If there’s a good anchor on it I’ll do it.” 

Lance later pulled Keith up to the loft to show Keith his workspace. Sunlight filtered in from the floor to ceiling window and the roof, dripping over the shag rug and the little futon tucked into the corner where the white cat of Lance’s was curled into a fluffy, white pillow under the mid-afternoon rays. A wide desk was crammed against the wall and overflowing with stacks of books, bottles, and boxes of ingredients and supplies. The floor only had a thin trail to walk to either the chair or one corner of the futon as it was covered in more stacks of books and heaping boxes of bleached driftwood, twine, seashells, and scatters if crystals and metals. 

“You don’t have a bookcase?” Keith nudged a stack of books with his toe. The book on top was a romance novel. 

“In my room. But I forget to put them away, or I use them enough I don’t wanna climb down to put them away only to get them back out later.” Lance collapsed back onto the futon and threw the light blue blanket over his legs, the white cat sat up, stretched, and curled up next to Lance’s legs.

The desk had a space cleared away for working with a headlamp leaning over the circle of space. A box of tiny tools, beads, clamps, twines, ropes, and wires all wrapped and tangled together. Keith didn’t know a single witch who was  _ this  _ disorganized with their supplies. Keith picked at the ball of wire. 

“I know what you’re thinking,” Lance said from the futon. “Hunk and Allura hate it too. Our friend Pidge is just as bad, probably worse than me.” 

“You make jewelry, too?” Keith untangled a little necklace clasp from the box of mayhem.

“Hm, sometimes. If I get my hands on something good I might make a necklace or bracelet out of it. Here, check it.” Lance stood, the blanket slipping off him to join the mess on the floor. The cat chirped in dissatisfaction. He stepped over a teetering stack of books and tugged a cord from his shirt collar. Framed neatly in an intricate knot of silver wire was a smooth, iridescent stone that shifted from blue to green to gold. “Labradorite. It’s good for aura protection and such.”

“Do you really need aura protection?”

“With Allura and her powers? Definitely. Also this just looks really pretty.”

Keith huffed a short laugh. “It is pretty.” He reached out and gently took the warm stone from Lance’s fingers, stroking a thumb over the intricate knotwork and touching the top of the point. It was smoothed down to not stab Lance. 

He didn’t realize how close he was standing until he became aware of Lance’s warm breath grazing across his face. Keith dropped the pendant and took a step back, bumping into the desk chair. 

“I could make you one, you know,” Lance offered. “I might actually have to make you one, anyway. Something with black tourmaline, if curse breaking is your job you’ll need it.”

Keith quirked his lips into a small smile. “You don’t have to, you’re already doing so much for me.”

“Just for that, I’m gonna make you one for sure.”

On Keith’s second week, Allura came to visit. It was just around dinnertime when she came through the front door, arms heaping with books and charts. 

“I think I figured it out,” Allura explained.

“Good evening to you too, princess,” Lance came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel.

Without bothering with a proper greeting, she slammed her armload of books and rolled up charts onto the coffee table. Keith shifted his feet out of the way just in time. 

“I believe this is a Gnochborne curse,” She explained. “The curse is latched onto an object and jumps from one item to the next until it reaches its intended target. Only a witch with powerful scrying abilities would be able to predict where the curse would go and where to place it in order for it to work properly and within a timely manner. The intentions of the curse is to slowly kill you, by blocking your connection from where you harness your magick and killing you in a way that no medicine could work to cure you. You.” She pointed at Keith. “Who have you pissed off?”

“Me? A lot of people,” Keith said. 

“Stop that. You pissed off someone powerful and ready to kill you.”

She was right. The curse, even with Lance’s daily attention, was growing stronger. Lance had to clear the house with sage and incense almost twice a day, and left the windows open even in the chilliest time of night to waft out the putrid fog Keith must be emanating. His headaches were getting worse, and the ringing in his ears was almost constant. 

“Allura, calm down. His symptoms are getting worse and-” Lance broke off into a cough. “He feels bad already.”

Allura frowned. “We have a week to prepare, and I need to know everything I can so we can break it.” She turned to Keith. “Tell me everything you know about the tree the curse is from. When was the storm?”

“It was a dry thunderstorm about a month ago. It hit some trees nearby, including the acacia Thace used to carve make a wood carving out of with the knife,” Keith explained.

“What else? Did anything strange happen that night?”

Keith clenched his jaw, doubling the throb of his headache. “My brother died that night.”

Lance sucked in a sharp breath. Keith didn’t turn to look at him, focused on Allura’s wide eyes. “He and his fiance went out to collect cactus needles for a potion he was making. His fiance came back shaken up from what he saw, and cried. He told me Shiro disappeared, and that there was no way he could be alive after ‘that’.”

“What was ‘that’?” Allura asked, taking a seat next to Keith. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. He felt like a dam was cracking. Allura wrapped an arm around his shaking shoulders.

“I don’t know. Adam was so upset I didn’t want to push it, but that’s my  _ brother _ , goddammit.” Keith’s eyes burned. Shiro was gone, and he didn’t have the heart to yank it out of Adam as to how and why when he saw how absolutely broken he was. “I want to know, I need to know, yet whatever happened was so terrible Adam locked himself away and I haven’t seen him since.”

“No offense, but it’s been like a month already and you should know,” Lance said, leaning against the arm of the loveseat next to Keith.

“We should give him a call, it would help to know for your sake,” Allura suggested softly. Keith nodded. A warm hand touched his forearm. Lance gripped the bare skin of his arm, the softness of his hands were a blessing against his chilled skin. 

Not long later, Keith found himself out on the front patio in the plastic chair, a mug of soothing tea on the table and a phone in his shaking hands.

Adam didn’t pick up, on any of the three times Keith called. He let out a resigned sigh after the third dropped call, taking a hearty sip of his tea and headed back inside.

“So?” Allura asked.She and Lance sat hunched over a couple of the books turned open on charts, bowls of salad Lance had made for dinner in their laps. A bowl sat waiting for Keith on the coffee table. 

Keith shook his head. “I can’t reach him. Are you sure? I don’t think the curse is that deep, it could be any witch I’ve pissed off in the past.”

“Everything matters, Keith. As a curse breaker you should know this.” Allura jabbed a fork laden in lettuce and strawberries at him. “This might be important. Lance, can you do some chakra cleansing for him? Part of the curse is that it clogs them up and blocks all the ways for his magick to come through. Do it at least twice before the ritual next week, got it?”

Lance nodded. “Anything else?”

“Find a spot on the beach for us to do it at. Hunk will come, too. Collect some driftwood and purify that, we’ll use that as boundaries. Hunk is bringing the herbs, and I have the rest. I need to get my hands on a couple crystals, but other than that we should be good. Got it?”

“Is there anything I need to do?” Keith asked. 

“Meditate and let Lance’s magick in. We need you as clean and open as possible by the full moon.”

She left not long after, letting Keith take her seat on the loveseat next to Lance. Keith slowly ate his salad, trying to swallow the sweet fruit and bitter dressing around his numb tongue. 

“Are you okay?” Lance broke the silence.

Keith hesitated, then nodded. “Okay enough. I will be, after all this.” He looked up and met Lance’s eyes, momentarily startled with how  _ blue  _ they were. He looked tired, and that was most definitely Keith’s fault.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” Lance murmured. He slid closer to Keith, their arms and knees brushing against each other. He didn’t mind.

“It’s okay, I’ll get over it.”

Everyone leaves him, he knew Shiro would find a way to leave him, too. 

“Don’t say that,” Lance said. He clasped Keith’s free hand between his own warm hands. “You have every right to mourn as long and hard as you want. Did you know Queen Victoria mourned for like, forty years after Prince Albert died?”

Keith snorted. “I don’t think I’ll be that dramatic about it.”

“She started the whole mourning practice, wearing bland, black clothes with a veil so no one could see you cry in public.”

“Should I get a veil?” Keith hummed.

It was Lance’s turn to laugh. “Line it with jet, it’s the only stone they were allowed to wear.”

Keith wrinkled his nose, but he did consider getting a jet ring to help with the mourning process at least. “I’ll consider.”

That night while laying in bed, Keith’s hand still felt warm where Lance had clasped it so earnestly. He dreamed in shades of blue.

The next morning, Keith woke up and couldn’t move. It took him a few moments to calm his panicked breathing before he was able to creakily pull himself from his bed and take shaky steps to the bathroom. The sun was barely up and streaming through the tiny window, flooding the bright blue walls with white. Not caring he forgot his toiletries and change of clothes, he stripped and stumbled into the hot shower. The heat soothed his stiff muscles and cleared a bit of the fog from his head. It was after he shut off the water and let his soaked hair drip steadily into the wet drain did he realize he had no way to get to his room without Lance most likely spotting his whole ass. His towel was in the dryer, and clothes in his room. 

“Lance?” He hesitantly called. It took him a few tries before Lance softly knocked in the door. 

“What’s up?” Lances muffled voice came from the door. 

“Can-can you get me my towel?” Keith, despite being flushed from the heat of the shower, blushed in embarrassment. 

Lance chuckled softly before pulling away and padding down the hall to the laundry room. A moment later he knocked on the door and cracked it open, Keith’s navy towel in Lance’s outstretched hand. 

He murmured a thanks and swiped the towel. It was still warm from the dryer. 

His limbs weren’t as stiff, but he was still shaky and foggy. Once he got dressed, he went to the kitchen where Lance was reading a paperback romance novel over a cup of morning tea. In that moment, with the white morning sun framing his figure, Keith was able to see Lance relaxed and unguarded; slumped against his chair, movements sluggish and uncoordinated (most likely due to shaking off the rest of his sleep), eyes were laden with heavy bags and roved slowly over the printed pages.

“The curse is progressing.” Keith popped Lance’s sleepy little bubble. “I woke up and couldn’t get out of bed, but I managed to haul myself to the shower and the hot water helped.” He winced at the memory. “Sorry about that, by the way.” 

“Don’t worry about it, but we should get going on our little healing session if you woke up like that.” Lance folded the corner of his page and stood up. “There’s hot water in the pot for tea, I’m gonna go set up. Was it stiffness this morning? Or pain?” 

“Both? Kind of,” Keith said, stepping aside to let Lance through the doorway. “I felt heavy and stiff. Like when you work a muscle too hard, but it’s my whole body.” 

“Go meditate in the yard for a bit, I’ll come get you when I’m ready and we can do a chakra cleansing along with the usual healing session,” Lance called from his loft office. He sounded strained. 

The chakra cleansing was tedious, but they helped. He felt good, with Lance using sounding bowls and his soft hums, but it took so long his feet fell asleep. Following the chakra cleansing and healing session, Lance herded Keith back to the bathroom and filled the tub with lavender, peppermint, rosemary, sage, valerian root, and sea salt. As a finishing touch, traced a line through the pool of water with his wand tipped with an aqua aura quartz. The line in the water glowed a faint blue, the light dripping into the water and diluted away. The water remained a faint shade of blue, steam rising from the surface.

Lance tapped his wand at the edge of the bath then stepped aside for Keith to get in. “Stay in here for at least thirty minutes, and when your done just leave the water. We’re going on a walk.”

After the cleansing and healing, paired with the bath he ended up spending nearly two hours in (that was the best bath he’d had in his life, he couldn’t help it). He got dressed and ate a light brunch. Lance had loaned him a tank top and a pair of flip flops to wear to the beach, since all he brought her his heavy boots and t-shirts with two pairs of pants. The jeans he wore were rolled up at the ankle and had his black cowboy hat hanging from a cord around his neck.

“Seriously?” Lance stood by the door in shorts that cut off a few inches above the knee and a thin t-shirt with a wide open collar. A straw hat was perched atop his head, flip flops and sunglasses clutched in his hands. “You were looking pretty cute until I spotted that godawful hat of yours.”

“Shut up, it keeps the sun off me.” Keith pushed passed Lance and out the front door with a huff. Lance’s chuckle followed him out into the sunny air. 

The walk down to the beach was a little over ten minutes through a neighborhood filled with houses ranging from cute little cottages to places people with a lot of money obviously come to vacation at. The wind coming from the ocean was cooling in the heavy air. It wasn’t nearly as hot as the desert was, but the humidity made his skin sticky in the most unpleasant way.

Keith had only gone to a beach once before in his life, and it was a sandy beach down further south. Here, the beach was made up of smoothed down pebbles brought in by the sea. Keith found it awful to walk through barefoot, but almost just as unpleasant with his flip flops- the little rocks would get stuck between his foot and sandal. Lance seemed undeterred, walking through the rocky ground barefoot. 

“They call this moonstone beach because once a long time ago, I think during the early twentieth century, there were tons of moonstones deposited here and tourists could just casually walk along the beach and find them,” Lance explained. He kneeled down and picked through the rocky shore, as if digging for moonstones. “Not anymore, though. They were over-harvested and we had a decline in deposits due to the change in the contour of the waterfront. Kinda sad, but I did find a moonstone once. It’s an ugly little dude but I love it.”

“You should make me something out of moonstone then, so I can remember this place,” Keith suggested. 

“Yeah, but it wouldn’t be genuine moonstone from this beach. It’d be from like, Sri Lanka or Brazil or something.”

“But you would’ve made it, and that’s what really matters.”

Under the heat of the sun and the shade of Lance’s straw hat, his face glowed red. “I guess.” He cleared his throat, stumbling to his feet. Keith reached out to steady him. “C’mon, let’s go find a spot for Allura.”

They wandered up and down the beach for a while, barely looking for potential ritual spots and instead taking turns to see how far they could throw rocks into the sea. 

“One time, over on that rocky outcrop, I kissed a siren.” Lance pointed to a jutting outcrop not to far from where they stood. “It was cool, but waaay to much teeth, you know?”

“I had a blind date with a werewolf.” Keith shuddered at the memory.

“Oh yikes.”

“Yeah. He had fleas and I watched one jump from his head into my soup.”

Lance snorted. “‘Waiter, what is this flea doing in my soup?’ ‘Why, it looks like he’s doing the backstroke’.”

It was so unfunny, but Keith couldn’t help but laugh. 

They climbed up the rocky outcrop where Lance claimed he kissed a siren and raced to the furthest point, where the waves crashed high and arched over their heads in a foam of white chaos. The ground was slippery and wet under their feet, forcing them to grip onto each other’s arms. 

“Hey, Keith?” Lance nudged Keith softly. “You’re a pretty cool dude, it sucks you’re gonna have to leave in a week.”

“You could always visit me, all of you can,” Keith said. He met Lance’s gaze, blue eyes dropping with exhaustion, but alight with a charming mirth that sent Keith’s blood rolling in the most pleasant way.

“Why would I do that? You should just come visit me. The desert sounds awful,” Lance said.

“That’s how I feel about coming to the coast,” Keith shot back.

“But you have to, we’re here.” Lance shook his arm, pulling a laugh from Keith’s lungs.

“And I’m in the desert.”

“What’s there to  _ do  _ in the desert? Collect animal bones? Sit in the sun watching cacti grow?” Lance whined.

“It’s not like there’s more stuff to do here, you know.”

“Uh yeah, you could play in the water.” To make his point, Lance started shoving Keith toward the water.

Keith barely got a shout out before Lance mercilessly tossed him into the foamy, white sea. The drop was only a few feet, and the rocks smooth as so it wouldn’t hurt, but it was still a shock to be dumped into the cold ocean. He swam to the surface, head popping above the crest of the blue green color, saturated in sunlight that bounced off the surface. He squinted up at the top of the rock where Lance was clutching his stomach laughing. He turned around and walked away from the edge, laughter still echoing above the dull roar of the ocean. 

“Where are you going?!” Keith shouted over the waves. “Get back here! Don’t just toss me in here and not think you’re going to- ack!”

Lance sprinted off the ledge with a hoot and dived into the water in front of Keith. He shielded his face from the harsh splash. Lance’s head broke from the surface, his hair plastered against his head and eyelashes clumping together with water and salt. His grin was so wide it looked like it hurt.

They splashed around for a while, tossing each other into the waves and playing games of tag until they let the surf bring their exhausted bodies back to the shore. Breathing heavily, they laid sprawled across the rocky beach, where the sea lapped gently at their ankles, leaving a trail from their feet to the ocean. 

Lance threw a sodden arm out and smacked it against Keith’s chest, leaving it there for Keith to grasp at his wrist.

“This seems like a good spot for the ritual next Friday,” Lance said suddenly. 

They came back to the little rocky nook tucked away on the beach a few days later with Allura to approve the location. She was delighted, and set to cleansing and enchanting the area so no one could accidentally stumble in on the ritual.

Hunk came to stay at Lance’s the day before the full moon with a suitcase full of herbs and a backpack full of clothes, many of which Keith had never seen before. He spent the day in Lance’s kitchen, mixing and sorting through his stockpile with the clouds passing over the midday sun, throwing the room into grey shadows. Lance, meanwhile, had taken to locking himself up in the loft where only the top of his head was seen bent over his desk from the front door. Allura came and went all day, poking and prodding at Keith and asking repetitive questions. 

Only a few hours before sundown, Allura and Lance both conducted a chakra cleansing and healing rituals on him. Their hands were warm against the chilled skin of his back, neck, and arms. Lance lead his overly relaxed body to the bathroom where another herbal bath waited for him. Lance drew a mark into the water, the white light dripped from his wand tip and diluted itself into the water, leaving the bath glowing softly and steam rising from the surface. Lance instructed him to stay in the bath for at least an hour. Keith stayed in the warmed water until it was time to go, his fingers and toes pruney and soft. The window outside grew darker, the sunlight that peaked through was a weakened gold with watery edges.

They all dressed in warm clothes to stave off the chill and headed to the beach at sunset, the sky thick with clouds that barely let the sun through to illuminate their walk. 

“I’m worried,” Allura said as they crossed the beach. “That this won’t work.”

Lance nudged her side. “Don’t jinx it. The power of the spoken word, remember?”

The twenty minute walk to the ritual spot from Lance’s cottage had left Keith breathless and weak in the knees, a sweat broken out on his forehead. They began to set up the circle on the rocky beach, laying out the driftwood Lance enchanted and placed candles in the four cardinal directions. The twenty minute walk to the ritual spot from Lance’s cottage had left Keith breathless and weak in the knees, a sweat broken out on his forehead. 

Keith watched them set up, annoyed he wasn’t allowed to help due to his “nasty, icky hands that will taint the magick” (Lance’s words, not his). He fingered the array of necklaces around his neck instead. Lance had climbed down from his loft as they were leaving earlier with chains and cords dangling low from his wrist. He passed out newly made pendants for everything from aura protections to mental stimulation. Around Keith’s neck was his usual smokey quartz and turquoise, his snake bone chain left in his duffle bag. Lance had added a black tourmaline on a thin gold chain, mounted in gold and jagged edges that pricked at Keith’s wandering fingers. Hanging low, the point brushing his naval, was a black cord with a stick of unpolished selenite wrapped intricately in silver wire. 

While Allura flipped through her Grimoire and Hunk delicately placed herbs in the circle, Lance pulled Keith aside. 

“I have one more thing for you,” Lance whispered, voice barely heard above the crashing waves reaching high tide. Lance took Keith’s hand in his own, slipping a silver ring from his pinky and onto Keith’s. “Moonstone is a good stabilizer.”

The iridescent stone winked at him in the silvery band it was mounted in, the sun beyond the horizon behind them and plunging them into a purple and blue twilight that reflected of the iridescent surface. The ring was warm against his clammy skin. 

“It’s almost time, get ready you two,” Allura called from the circle. The wind had picked up, sending a shiver through Keith’s body. Her hair was blown over her shoulder and into her face, like a silvery veil.

“Allura, is it even going to work?” Hunk almost shouted over the harsh wind. “It’s too cloudy, how can you draw power from the moon like that?”

“Lance.” She beckoned Lance to come closer. Keith trailed behind him to hear what she had to say. “Our energy from the moon is weakened, do you think you could draw a little more from the sea?”

“We need to be in the sea to do that,” Lance responded.

“How about you face east and have your feet in the water? The circles already set, and we don’t have time to scoot it closer to the shore.”

The crashing waves looked like it will throw Lance’s thin body away. It made Keith nervous.

Allura turned to Keith. “Go lay in the circle on your back with your head toward Lance. Hunk, sit east and face west. I’m taking north.”

“Shouldn’t we have gotten Pidge to-” Hunk started. A rumble of thunder rang through the air. The clouds completely blocked out the weak light of the moon, plunging them into almost total darkness. 

Allura lit the candles, placing a charm on the wicks with a tap of her wand to keep them lit despite the wind and took her position at the southern edge, her bare toes wiggling in the rocky ground and snowy hair messy from the wind. Lance took the western edge, the water lapping at his ankles, and Hunk took the eastern edge with the rocky cliffs looming behind him. 

Keith laid in the middle as instructed, taking a deep, calming breath to sooth his racing heart.

This isn’t going to work, the weather was against them. Two of the three witches with working magick weren’t as powerful as they could be with the moon clouded. He hoped, beyond anything, that this will work and he can go home to his desert shack to his dog and dead brother’s grieving fiance. 

Lance, Hunk, and Allura raised their wands, the tips illuminated a starry white and traced a sigil in the air, leaving a trail of light in its wake. 

Allura, leading the ritual, started to chant the opening. Her voice rang clear over the roaring waves and ocean winds.

_ “In the names of my ancestors, my gods, and myself, I call upon thee, oh creatures of Earth and Water, the Moon and Sky. Come forth, cleanse Keith of all evil and alien magicks, and restore him to balance and health. By our wills combined, so mote it be.” _

He felt the magick prickle at his fingertips and toes. Allura walked around the circle clockwise, sprinkling ash around the ring as she hummed a mantra. Lance from where he stood at his head, flicked sea water onto his bare skin whenever Allura paused. Keith resisted the urge to wipe the sticky salt from his lips.

After three times around, Allura stopped at the northern edge and said, “ _ No more befouled, again unbound, again unbidden _ .” Her voice rang like a bell through the air, rich and pure, magnified by her magick. The sludge in his blood cringed and groaned, pulling at the sinews of his muscles and creaking against his bones. He groaned in pain. The magick was working its way up past his wrists and ankles. The slow progress scared him.

She turned and walked counterclockwise and flicked sea salt at Keith at each candle she passed. The salt burned his skin, more than the seawater had. He hissed at each fleck of salt, the creature of the curse curled and boiled in his blood and bones. His head throbbed with many tiny hands pushing against his skull, wiggling around to avoid the white magick. 

At last she stopped at the southern edge again, the hums from Lance and Hunk stopping. The magick had worked up to his elbows and knees, compressing the curse to the rest of his body. He felt his bones creak and groan from the pressure, his stomach gurgling  and clenching in pain. His skin was drenched in sweat.

_ “I thank thee, oh creatures of Earth and Water, the Moon and Sky, in the name of myself, my gods, and my ancestors. Be released to your homes, doing no harm on your way, and return to me with glad hearts when next you are summoned. By our wills combined, so mote it be.” _ With the final toll of her voice, Keith screamed.

The curse, the black sludge, was bubbling at his skin. It burned, burned more than anything he’s ever felt before. His insides were boiling away in a hot, oily pan that submerged his muscles in an overbearing heat. Tears dripped down his temple and into his hairline. He felt a yank at his chest of a hand digging into the slime that desecrated his body. He writhed on the ground, the rocks digging in his back felt like nothing compared to he fire in his bones and needles in his veins. 

There was echoing crash and shouts muted by the ringing in his ears. Cold hands gripped his heated face, his arms, his legs. They held him still. The magick that had worked up to his biceps and thighs was sucked away in a deep breath and disappeared along with most of the pain. 

He was left on the ground reeling, head spinning and vision spotted with black clouds that imitated the sky. His joints ached, skin burned with the remnants of heat. Allura leaned over his side, stroking his arms and muttering a spell to soothe the pain. He felt the biting edge eb away. Hunk clasped his ankles, tears welling in his eyes and lower lip swollen from biting it. 

Above him, Lance held his head in his lap, eyes wide and long fingers wiping the tears from Keith's temple. He too, was humming nonsense into Keith’s ear. It made him feel better.

When his heart stopped racing and breath evened out, Allura was the first to break the silence.

“This is a lot more serious than I thought.”


	2. The Forest Ritual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They try again, and Lance means something to Keith now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big fucking thank u @ deafy for staying up late for me i know ur busy you literally deserve the world

They needed to wait for the next full moon, extending Keith’s stay in the little beach town for another month. He called his mom, who was keeping an eye on Cosmo, and told her the bad news. 

“I’m so sorry to hear about that,” she said softly through the phone line. “I can come up and bring Cosmo with me. He really misses you.”

“I know, I probably should have taken him with me.” Cosmo was Keith’s familiar and most likely wasn’t taking his three week abscess well. “You can come up when you have time, don’t try and take time off work just for this.”

“My baby could be  _ dying  _ and you’re worried about that?” Her sharp huff came through as static.

“Do what you want, I guess. There’s an inn a few blocks away you could stay at, but I’m not sure if they’re pet friendly.”

“Don’t care. I’m bringing the big boy over, he misses you. Once they see his cute face they’ll let him sleep on the counter.” Her voice went soft as she spoke of Keith’s familiar. “He watches out the kitchen window every day, like he’s going to see you coming up the drive to get him. At night he climbs in bed with me, but he has trouble staying asleep. He’s not eating as much, and won’t play with his favorite toys.”

It hurt Keith to be away from Cosmo for so long, but he was worried the curse might affect their bond and his health. They were link by the soul, and the curse was tearing apart every fiber of his being. But if he’s going to stay here another month, a visit wouldn’t hurt.

She continued. “I’ll come up in about a week, how does that sound?”

“I’d like that a lot. Bring your lemon pie?”

“For these people? I’ll bring one for each of them as a thanks for helping my idiot son.”

Keith snorted. “I’ll see you soon. Text me when you have a date to come up. Can you bring me some more clothes, too? I don’t mind the ones I have, but I’ve been wearing the same three shirts for weeks and I don’t think my henley can take anymore washings.”

“Will do. Anything in particular?”

Keith listed off a variety of items before they bid their goodbyes and hung up. He crawled out of his bed finally, still incredibly sore from last night’s failed ritual. After a shower and a clean set of clothes later, Keith went out into the kitchen to see that Lance hadn’t even woken up yet. It was after nine, and he’s usually up with the sun doing one thing or another. Keith went to start the morning tea for him and dug around the fridge for breakfast. The ritual last night must have worn him out worse than Keith thought. 

He was in the middle of scrambling a bunch of eggs on a skillet when Hunk came through the front door. 

“‘Morning Keith, how are you feeling?” Hunk went straight to the fridge and pulled a carton of orange juice out.

“Good morning,” Keith responded, voice cracked at the end. “‘M sore. My head kind of hurts and I have a weird tickle in my throat. Kind of feels like a cold more than a curse.”

“Here, lemme help.” Hunk nudged open the fridge again and started taking more food out. “We’re all exhausted and icky, let’s make breakfast burritos.”

It was interesting watching Hunk cook. He had Keith chop up green onions and tomatoes while he started to season and toss handfuls of cheese and ham into the already cooking eggs. When the first burrito was almost done, Hunk tapped the skillet with the tip of his wand and it sizzled even louder, the pile of burrito innards rising like a set of lungs. Keith’s never seen a kitchen witch work before.

“Order up.” Hunk drizzled Sriracha over the eggs and artfully wrapped the burrito tightly. From the fridge he produced a bowl of sliced watermelon and added those to the plate, sliding it across the counter with a brimming cup of orange juice. “I’m gonna wake up Lance.”

Hunk hustled out of the kitchen with a spatula in hand to Lance’s bedroom. Keith took his burrito and juice to the table and settled into his usual seat. A tattered paperback book sat by Lance’s seat by the window. The synopsis on the back was all in Spanish. He flipped it to the front to see a muscle bound man, greased up and shirtless, cradling a dainty woman. Her hair and dress whipping around her dramatically as tears rolled down her face. Keith snorted in amusement.

The burrito Hunk made sat steaming on his plate, smelling absolutely divine. He took a bite and moaned into the food. He felt  his headache go away, his sore muscles relaxed, and his energy replenished. 

Hunk came back in a few minutes later, a sleepy Lance in tow. Keith did a double take, unused to the ruffled up Lance.

With all the time Lance had in the morning he had plenty of time to do an intense skincare routine to make his skin glow, his hair done, and had a robe over his sleep worn pajamas. Today, he stumbled in and plopped himself down next to Keith looking like the bed ate him. Dry drool was crusted on his cheek and pillow lines drove up and down his arm and face. His clothes were rumbled, the tank top he wore pulled to the side so far Keith could see a peak of a nipple. His hair was completely flat on one side and stood wild on the other. He was squinting at Keith, rubbing his face to get the sleep crust off his eyes. 

“Good morning, sunshine,” Keith said. Lance grunted. Keith for some reason, found this absolutely endearing and couldn’t stop watching Lance in his sleepy state.

“‘Mornin’,” he grumbled back, voice thick and hoarse with sleep. 

“Want mint tea, dude?” Hunk asked.

Lance gave him a weak  _ mhmm _ and leaned back against his chair, blinking slowly. He heaved a dry cough and leaned forward to rest his head on the table instead. His cat jumped up out of nowhere and curled up in his lap,a motor-like purr rumbled in her chest. Lance gentle scratched behind her ears.

“Jeez, last night must have really taken a lot out of you.” Hunk placed a burrito for Lance and a mug of tea in front of him. “Dig in, you’ll feel better.”

Lance hummed in response and took a tentative sip of the tea. “Not very hungry right now, can you save it for me?”

“No, absolutely not. Eat half and I’ll let you go wash your face.” Hunk sat in the seat on the other side of Lance and dug into his own overstuffed burrito. “It’s infused with magick to help get you back at full strength.”

Lance grumbled something incomprehensible and picked at the tortilla with a fork. His eyes were glazed over, not focused in on anything in particular. Keith could hear his breathing was a little labored.

“Hey, you okay, dude?” Keith leaned over and asked.

Lance nodded, the motion snapped him from his reverie. As if to prove he was okay, he cut off a bite with the side of his fork and stuff the burrito in his mouth. Sriracha sauce dripped down his chin, cheeks puffed out like a hamster. Keith snorted.  

He cleared his plate first and got up to clean the kitchen. Hunk protested from his seat, but he waved him off. He made the food, Keith could at least do this for him. 

He didn’t stick around the house. It was too depressing, with Lance’s exhausted aura and Hunk’s sulking. Keith went on a walk into town to a wine tasting room, then after a couple rounds he bought a couple of local wines and went to visit the gift shops to find something for his mom. 

In an little corner store jam packed with windchimes and  tacky decor, he found an ugly little table fountain that was a fish/frog hybrid barfing water into a bowl. He didn’t hesitate to buy it for his mom, knowing for sure she loves those ugly cute things that are absolutely useless. And frogs for some reason. Her bathroom was decorated in at least nineteen frogs. One his way out of the shop, he spotted a little jellyfish wind chime made of seashells, much like the ones in Lance’s home. A notecard on the display read it was made by a local artist that went by “The Tailor”. He’d come back and get one before he left.

By around three he got hungry and lugged his new finds to a nearby cafe that had a restaurant and a gift shop attached to it. He got a sandwich that was basically a Thanksgiving meal between two pieces of bread, then went to the shop next door and bought the fantastic jam and some oven mitts shaped like cats for Kolivan, his neighbor and mentor. 

Arms sore with carrying all his junk, he decided to head back to the house and take a nap or something, maybe read one of Lance’s books. Hunk’s car was gone from the driveway, but a peek in the garage window indicated Lance was still home. The front door was weirdly unlocked.

“Hey I’m back,” Keith called into the tiny house. “Hunk left the door unlocked, I dunno if that was- _ Lance.” _

It took everything in him not to drop his armload of glass items. He stumbled to the ground, putting the bags on the floor and crawled over to where Lance laid in the kitchen doorway. His cat was pacing worried circles around him, yowling loudly. She jumped out of the way when Keith reached his side and bumped her head into his leg. 

“Lance, what happened? Are you okay?” Keith flipped over his limp form and cradled him close. Lance’s eyes were closed, eyelids fluttering. His breathes came out in short, gasping wheezes that whistled with every exhale. In Keith’s arms, he could feel the heat rolling off his clammy skin. 

Keith pushed Lance’s sweaty hair back from his face. He wasn’t stirring. 

Seeing as Lance wasn’t waking, Keith stood and gently lifted Lance to carry him bridal style down the hall to his bedroom, his cat at his heels. The door was cracked open, thankfully, which allowed Keith to push it open with Lance’s feet.

He’d never been in Lance’s room before. It was airy and brimmed with sunlight, the full size bed padded with a thick, blue duvet and drowned with pillows at the headboard. He lowered Lance onto the bed and tugged the blankets out from under and tucked him in. The cat jumped up and curled up on Lance’s pillow right next to his head, a purr emanating from deep in her chest.

In all honesty, Keith didn’t ever get sick and didn’t know how to take care of a sick person. He called Hunk and explained what happened, hands shaking. Hunk said he’ll be back in ten minutes and for now get Lance situated with a cool patch, water, and aspirin.

Keith found a thermometer in the hall closet. With a cool patch on his forehead, the flushed cheeks, and thermometer sticking out of his mouth, Lance looked like a sick person from a cartoon. The thermometer beeped, a bright 102 flashed on the little screen.

Hunk came back not long after and went to work in the kitchen, brewing an herbal remedy to curb the sickness. Allura came by not long after, having been informed by Hunk. She leaned over Lance’s body, her silvery hair falling over him like a sleek curtain. 

“It’s the miasma,” she informed them. Keith stiffened, the oily sludge in his blood rose up when it was mentioned. He felt cold all over, that he did this to Lance. “It’s poisoning the air here. I knew it would happen, but it would take a couple months before it would start to effect someone within close quarters to you. It’s working faster than we thought, Keith. We need to get this dealt with by the next full moon or you may not live to see the Cold Moon.”

He nodded stiffly. “I’ll leave. There’s an inn I can stay at not too far from here.”

She shook her head. “That’ll cost you a lot of money. We’ll have you house hop so your miasma won’t accumulate in one area for too long. Stay with me for a week, then we’ll find you somewhere else.” She jerked her head to Lance. “You won’t stay here for a while, we need to do a thorough cleanse of the house and get him back on his feet before the next full moon.” 

Lance awoke at that moment with a heaving, wet cough. His whole body shook with his quivering lungs, hand gripped tightly to his chest. Allura turned him over to his side and rubbed soothing circles to his back. It took a few moments for him to calm down, his breathing was rough and wet after that fit. His cat had awoken with his rattling coughs, chuffed gentle and purred louder. She licked his damp temple soothingly. Lance huffed and reached a weak hand up to stroke her head.

Keith needed to get out of here. It broke him seeing Lance like this, that he was the cause for his ailment. 

“I’ll pack my stuff.” Keith turned on his heel and left the room. His things weren’t scattered that far from his bag, easily folded and tucked back in. The dryer held one of his shirts, the bathroom had his soap by the tub. He found his cowboy hat on a hook by the door, his recent purchases moved to the kitchen table. He left a bottle of wine for Lance and Hunk on the counter and took the rest to his room. 

Hunk had Lance taken care of with sage and lavender burning softly on his nightstand. Allura traced sigils across his chakra points with softly glowing tip of her hand, murmuring under her breath. Lance’s breathing wasn’t as loud and wet as before, but he could still hear Lance struggle to pull in oxygen all the way from the doorway. 

It hurt to see him like this, weakened and reduced to a sorry state because of Keith. He wanted to help, but there was nothing he and his tainted hands could do to cure him. 

“Ready to go?” Allura rose from the wicker chair in the corner. Keith nodded stiffly. Hunk walked them out, hand clenched a crumpled piece of paper Allura had left with instructions on how to cleanse Lance.

“I’ll be back tonight,” she said to Hunk as they stepped out of the house. The sun was bright on the ocean, Keith noted. It hurt to look a the light refracting off the surface, even from here. “The moon is still full to our eyes, I may be able to conduct a ritual to purge the miasma from him so he may heal.”

The ride back was awkwardly quiet. Allura kept the windows rolled down.

“This isn’t your fault,” she said suddenly when they were driving past the cemetary. “None of us figured it would start to effect Lance. Well, we did. But we assumed you would be cured by the time Lance would start to show signs of the miasma invading his body. We’ll have him fixed up before you know it.”

Keith nodded. He wasn’t in the mood to talk. Nausea from the car ride and worry over Lance was taking ahold of him. 

The room Allura ended up giving him was on the bottom of the house and furthest away from her sleeping quarters. The windows were level with the mountainside and he could see the sea town if he craned his neck to look beyond the trees. If he squinted he could see the ocean. His bed was a full size with a silky comforter and mahogany nightstands. Next to the twin lamps were Himalayan salt lamps that glowed a soft golden pink. There was only a matching dresser and a door to a bathroom. He wouldn’t have to worry about infecting Allura’s bathroom with his miasma, he guessed. He put his duffle bag and the bags of wine and the fish fountain on the dresser by the little pot of viper’s bowstring hemp. 

He didn’t even bother unpacking, just kicked off his boots and tossed himself onto the bed with a sigh. He sank right into the memory foam. 

The moonstone ring was still on his pinky. He held his hand up to admire the glinting jewel. It was a pretty piece, the sleek silver band had a few dents and scratches in it from wear, and the stone itself had a blue tint to it. He’ll give it back to Lance next time he sees him, which he hoped was very soon.

Allura conducted his daily healing sessions. They weren’t the same as Lance’s, nor as effective. Her specialty magick laid elsewhere. Hunk brought him tea and herbs to replace whatever Allura couldn’t cleanse. He felt himself getting sicker. The sun burned and fabric itched his skin. A few times he’s found himself splayed on the bathroom floor naked when he was too overwhelmed and tired. He always kept Lance’s ring on.

It got harder to wake up in the morning. At first, he blamed the sinking of the memory foam mattress. He wanted to blame the bed, but he knew it was the curse sinking him into its pool of inky, black coils. The veins on his arms were turning from the usual blue purple color to a grey. His vision would cloud over and blur if he focused on something for too long, forcing him to cringe back and blink the mist from his eyes. 

His stamina dropped significantly. That was probably second worse to losing his magick. He loved to run and move, take hikes and do karate in his free time. He got winded going up a flight of stairs now. 

Allura gave him a wide berth. She only came into contact with him when absolutely necessary. The big house was quiet, too far away from the ocean. It needed more windchimes. He really missed Lance. It only took a couple days in Allura’s too big house for him to realize how much he missed seeing him. As annoying he could be, Keith had genuinely enjoyed spending time with him. 

Lance was lucid after four days. Four whole days Lance laid comatose in his bed, stirring occasionally to drink or go to the bathroom. 

“His vomit was grey,” Allura had told him the day after Keith started staying at her house. “The miasma had invaded his blood.” He did that. Keith made Lance’s vomit grey and coughs so wet and painful. 

He sank into a depression, which probably wasn’t helping the curse’s progress. He ached all the time and ate less than he should, but he couldn’t stomach anything more than tea and bland crackers. Allura offered him pineapple one day and he gagged it down. An hour later he threw it back up.

When he stayed with Lance, he would leave the house every day to do something, anything. With Allura he barely got the energy to pull himself out of bed. Allura warned him to not feel guilty, to pull himself out of this slump he was sinking into. His moods made the curse progress faster, the cloying depression that sank through his skin only aided its power and made him weaker.He couldn’t do anything about it

The worst part was Hunk had planned a surprise party for Lance the day after the ritual. They were to all celebrate Keith’s broken curse and Lance’s birthday at the nicest restaurant that night, but with Lance so sick he had to cancel reservations and make him a potion to curb the side effects.

When his week was up, Keith already had a room at an inn off Main street and near the turnoff toward Allura’s house. The room was small, and had a balcony that overlooked a bunch of trees and the back of a hill. The bed had the itchy blanket, and paintings of seashells and a child on the beach decorated the bland, white walls.

His mom came to town that week with his dog in tow. She got a room in the same inn, due to it being the only pet friendly hotel in the whole town. Neighboring towns had some, but she wanted to be as close to Keith as possible.

“Hi there.” She pulled him into a hug when he came down to meet her at her car. Cosmo was barking wildly, scampering from the backseat to throw himself at Keith and Krolia. Keith laughed, his incredibly fluffy malamute jumped to lick his face. Cosmo wiggled between him and his mom to stand on his hind legs and lick Keith’s face until he was soaked in dog saliva. 

Keith looked over at his mom from over his familiar’s head. She had her hand on her hips and a small frown on her face. “You’re getting weak.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.

He hushed Cosmo and stayed knelt on the asphalt to pet him. “I am. If the curse isn’t broken soon, I won’t live through December.”

Krolia pierced her lip, eyes turned dark. “We’re not going to do this half-assed.”

“We?” He parroted back. 

“Yes, I’m helping. My magick is divination, not healing like your friends, but I have something that could probably help. Here.” She climbed back into the car and dug around the glove box for a second, before she emerged with a soft “ _ ah-ha!”.  _ In her hand was a piece of burnt wood.

“The acacia!” He snatched the wood from her hand. It was only a shard, half a foot long and two inches wide. The jagged, blackened wood left soot on Keith’s fingers. 

“Getting an idea of the source of the curse will help Allura trace its source, correct? The ritual failed because you did not have enough information,” Krolia said. “I also brought some butterfly weed from my yard, for your friend.”

“What about work?” Keith asked.

She waved off his question. “I have vacation and sick days to use up, so I’m scott free until August 28th. Gives us enough time to do the ritual and drive back home so I can make it to my seven AM shift.”

She was confident it will work with her. Keith believed her more than anyone, and for the first time in over a week he actually felt a little hopeful. He stood and gave his mom a hug. “Thank you,” he said into her hair. She smelled like the desert dirt and her rose scented shampoo. 

While Krolia got settled into her room, Keith hung out on his balcony with Cosmo. He would not leave his side no matter what and Keith figured they’ll have to find someplace to eat that allows pets. Hunk texted him the location of a cute cafe down Main street on the opposite side of town, which wasn’t that far due to the whole town being less than 10 miles wide. 

Allura and Hunk met them there, along with a new third person Keith hasn’t seen before.

“It’s Pidge.” She shook Keith’s hand, then wiped that hand on her shorts. “I’m a tech witch.”

“Keith, desert witch.” He said. 

She wrinkled her nose. “You smell like one.” If she was like Lance with her rude remarks, Keith liked her already. 

They settled into their seats, Cosmo tucked under Keith’s chair with a bowl of water. The cafe had a back patio with a high fence draped in climbing flowers. A string of fairy lights hung over their umbrella covered tables, and a small, stone wall kept a garden filled with local flowers. 

With all the introductions and formalities aside, Krolia was the first to bring it up. “You said you believe it’s a Gnochborne curse?”

Allura nodded, taking a sip from her iced tea. “With its ability to jump from object to person, yes. This ritual failed, but I have one more I can try on with. It’s a lot more tedious, and requires more supplies, but we can do it.”

“Which ritual?” Krolia’s eyes narrowed. 

“This one we might have to do in September, since it draws from the power of the new moon instead of a full moon.”

“A new moon? But aren’t you and Lance stronger then?” Keith asked.

“Yes, but the ritual will be stronger, more likely to succeed. If it doesn’t this should determine the very nature of your curse.”

Keith grumbled and propped his elbow on the table to lean his head in his hand. 

“How much is this going to cost him?” Krolia asked. 

“With the trouble we’ve caused you, pulling you from your work and taking up even more of your time due to the first ritual failing, I’m willing to wave the fee.” Allura turned and shot Keith a small smile. “Especially for a friend.”

Keith jerked back up. Their food arrived before Keith could say anything. 

“I insist we pay you for the supplies at least,” Krolia said over the rim of her coffee. “It can’t be cheap breaking a big curse like that.”

“We can discuss that once this is all over, alright?” Allura smiled kindly. “Pidge is going to aid us this time, and I assume you too, Ms. Kogane?”

“Call me Krolia, honey,” Krolia said. 

Allura nodded. “She’s a tech witch, not much use in curse breaking, but she’s going to set up the space for us.”

Pidge looked up from her phone, a piece of spaghetti dangled from her mouth. She quickly swallowed and adjusted her glasses. “We’re taking every precaution we can to ensure this goes as smoothly as possible. There were several things that went wrong and we’re not going to be sloppy this time. I’m gonna clear out all the electromagnetic waves from the air and keep Lance away from this. Also you’re going to be naked.”

Keith chokes on his panini. Hunk thumped him on the back to clear his coughs. “We’re going that far?”

“It’ll just be me present Keith, don’t worry.” Allura’s smile turned into a smirk. “I won’t tell Lance about your penis size if it’s small.”

How Allura said “penis” with her posh accent had reduced him to dry heaving. Hunk and Pidge snorted. Krolia quirked a brow at their antics, but didn’t go to intervene. 

“But if it’s big? Boy Lance isn’t going to hear the end of it.”

“Stop, I beg of you,” Keith choked out. His eyes were wet with unshed cheers and throat burned. 

Krolia cleared her throat. “What else will you need for it?”

“Easy stuff I can get myself, mostly.” Allura smacked Hunk and Pidge across their arms to stop their snickering. “I need to make an oil from Keith’s patron deity.”

Keith shrugged. “I’m agnostic.”

“Star sign?”

“Scorpio.”

“That’ll suffice. A patron deity would be most helpful, though. Is there anyone at all you would draw power from?”

“Ra? I draw from him sometimes if I absolutely need to.”

“Scorpio and Ra. Ok.” Allura hummed and stirred her French onion soup. “We have to wait until the second of September to do anything. If this doesn’t work.” She stopped and stared contemplatively at a garden gnome behind Pidge. “I have a way to put a block on the curse until. I have a hunch this might not be a Gnochborne, but this ritual will tell me for sure what it is.”

It wasn’t very heartening to hear, that he’d have to wait a whole month before anything is done. They finished their meal with idle chatter. Krolia gave Hunk the butterfly weed, who promised to let Keith come see Lance once he’s all healed up.

“He’s more susceptible to the curses side effects now,” Hunk explained. “He can be around you, but not for a long time.”

Keith’s heart sank. 

They parted not long after. Keith had passed the Acacia to Allura for her to examine right before they left. Hunk, Pidge, and Allura headed straight to Lance’s to get him the butterfly weed, and Krolia and Keith back to their inn. 

“You’ve met some good people,” Krolia said to him later on Keith’s balcony. They sat in the hard plastic chairs with styrofoam cups of the wine he’d bought at the winery and paper plates with only the crumbs of Krolia’s lemon pie remaining. The sunset was beautiful so close to the ocean. The sky was gold and lavender, the meager clouds were pale streaks in the sky and bloated with faded sunbeams. “From what you told me and my meeting with them today, I feel like you’re in good hands.”

Keith sighed. “I’m kind of thankful to the curse, in some weird way. It brought us together.” He lifted his feet to rest them on the iron railing, taking a second to wiggle his toes and let the sea breeze tickle his bare skin. “Everything happens for a reason, you know?”

“We’re all made of dead stars, linked by fate and stardust,” Krolia nodded. Keith idly twisted the ring on his pinky. She eyed the ring on his hand. “Will you stay in contact with them after this is over?”

“I hope,” Keith hummed. He took a deep sip of his wine, the bitter taste of alcohol and heady aroma flooded his senses. “Hard to say.”

“I hope you do.”

Krolia and Keith spent their time together exploring the town and the area around it. With her car they were able to drive further up the coast to find more beach and hiking trails. It was a little easier to breath with Krolia around. He was able to eat a little more, but his veins were still grey and his stamina was weakening

A few days after Krolia arrived in town, Keith got a call from Lance after a day of driving around and exploring trails.

“Keith!” Lance said loudly through the speaker. Keith jerked back at the sudden screech.

“Lance! How are you feeling?” Keith leaned against Krolia’s car, wiping his sweat off with a rag. He was breathing too hard into the receiver. 

“Tired, kind of weak.” Lance broke off into a harsh cough. “But tons better. I don’t feel like I’m going to drop dead any second now. I wanted to call and thank your mom for the butterfly weed, it really helped.”

“I’ll tell her,” he agreed. 

“Also uh,” Lance trailed off. His voice was still crackling, deep and hoarse with congestion, but not nearly as bad as before. “I wanted to see if we can uh, hang out soon?”

Keith’s heart had just calmed down from the hike and was picking back up. “Aren’t you banned from seeing me until you’re better?”

“Yeah, but Allura’s not my mom. I should be fine by like, Saturday. Let’s go get take out and some fresh air on Sunday.”

“I- are you sure?” Keith’s throat was suddenly dry.That was in three days.

“Positive. I missed your face while I was bedridden.” Keith could hear the smile in his voice.

“I-I missed you, too.” Then he quickly added. “Dude.”

Lance laughed, low and throaty and probably hurt. “I’ll pick you up Sunday afternoon, ‘kay?”

They bid their goodbyes and hung up. Krolia was standing on the other side of the car with a smug look on her face. He gave her a quizzical look. “What?”

“What?” She parrotted back. She had a suppressed smile, eyes glittered with mirth. 

“Shut up.” He frowned and broke off into a heaving cough. The hike, though short and easy, was probably a bad idea. His breath was ragged and wheezed, his throat burned and muscles ached. The air was warm and temperament, not at all like the heat from his home in the desert, but his skin burned under the heat of the sun. Krolia noticed his condition and had cut their trip short to take him back to the hotel. 

She frowned. “Get in the car, we’ll get you some water and a nap.”

Sunday couldn’t come soon enough. Keith, while both excited and nervous, made himself focus on the prospect of a day out with Lance and not his declining health. He lost his sense of smell completely by Saturday, able to breath through his nose but no odor came in. He got sunburned now, which had never happened before. He was tender and red, the skin exposed to the sun burned hot to the touch and stung to move. Allura brought him an aloe vera rub Lance and Hunk had made for a nasty sunburn Pidge had gotten. Krolia bought him sunscreen with an SPF of fifty. 

He couldn’t fall asleep at night anymore, body aching and heavy, but refused to rest. When he did finally fall asleep, he’d stay asleep for ten hours. Krolia let him rest, and made sure to get him easy food for his clenching stomach.

On Sunday, Keith woke up around two with his phone ringing in his ear. Keith couldn't read the contact name through his sleep clouded eyes and opted to just answer it.

“Keith! I’m outside your room, open up!” Lance’s voice blared from the phone.

It took him a second to process what Lance was saying before. “Oh fuck hold on. Uh- shit.” Keith launched himself out of bed and stumbled blindly to the door. He leaned heavily against the wall and unlocked the padlock and threw open the door to find Lance, framed in the blinding, mid afternoon light, standing in his doorway with his phone to his ear.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry.” Keith hastily hung up. “I was asleep hold up lemme get ready and-” The sun was so bright, Keith couldn’t open his eyes. Lance was barely seen through the blur of his lashes.

“Hey, hey relax.” Lance grabbed Keith’s shoulders and pushed him back inside, kicking the door shut behind him. “You look like absolute shit, dude. We can stay in if you’re not feeling well, or I could just go home. . .”

“No! No, I-I want to hang out with you.” Lance’s hands were still on his shoulders. His vision had cleared up, and he was able to blink the last of sleep from his eyes and stare up at Lance. He gulped. “I haven’t seen you since, well, since you collapsed. Are you okay?”

“If I wasn’t okay I wouldn’t be here.” Lance smiled. 

Keith smacked Lance’s arm. “Don’t say shit like that. Give me five minutes and I’ll be ready to go.”

Less than five minutes later, Keith was dressed in his only nice pair of jeans and a grey raglan. He soaked every inch of skin bare with sunscreen and had his cowboy hat hung around his neck. Lance wrinkled his nose at the sight of it. 

“Ew,” he said. “I really hate your hat.”

“I don’t like your hat either, so we’re even.” Keith eyed too large straw hat on his head. 

Lance narrowed his eyes, a small pout on his lips. He shook that look off and grabbed Keith’s hand. “Come on, the days not getting any younger.” Keith jumped at the sudden touch, but let himself be dragged out the door. 

They went down the road to that sandwich shop Keith visited on the day Lance collapsed with a restaurant and gift shop of the same name.

“What’s with that?” Keith asked as they entered, the little door bell tinkled above them. The place was tiny, with concrete floors and filled with the sound of fans whirring loudly. The tiny tables had plastic, floral print tablecloth covers and little vases of fake, yellow flowers by the napkin dispensers, salt, and pepper. A display of pies and treats sat in the bakery case at the counter. “There’s like, five places with the name on it.”

“Four, scuse you,” Lance corrected. He went over to a tiny fridge by the counter and pulled a bottle of root beer out. “It’s a farm we have over this mountain. That’s the main base, a gift shop and berry picking, but in town we have that high end restaurant, this cafe, and the gift shop. Want one?”

“Just a bottled water. Do they like, own you guys?”

Lance hummed. “Probably. I like their tea and pies. They make good jam, too.”

They ordered their food to go, two sandwiches with bags of chips and three mini pies. They got back into Lance’s little car and drove across town and down into an unfamiliar neighborhood. The houses were large and extravagant, none were like the other and each looked like they cost roughly the same or more as Allura’s big house. A vacation neighborhood, probably.

“Where are we going?” Keith asked.

“Nature hike through the bluff and we can eat at a table or something.” He parked at a tiny lot at the end of the cul-de-sac. 

“I’ve gone through the bluff before. It’s nice during sunset.”

“Exactly. C’mon, let’s go see some nature and eat these nice ass pies.” Lance unfolded himself from the car, taking the plastic bag of food with him around to the trunk.

“What are you doing?” Keith furrowed his brows at Lance as he climbed out of the car. He watched Lance open the trunk, where a picnic basket with napkins, utensils, and a thermos with cups sat in already. He plopped the bag in there and shut the lid, tugging it out of his car and shutting the trunk. 

“Picnic, remember?”

Keith snorted. “Thank you for the wonderful meal you’ve prepared.”

“You’re welcome.” Lance grinned and turned toward the stairway up the hill. “Let’s go, I’m too hungry to wait for your slow ass.”

They walked slow for Keith. He felt bad, really bad, but he was immensely grateful Lance kept his long legs in check. It was peak heat, only 80 degrees and humid from the sea down the cliff from them. If Keith kept his eyes forward, he could pretend he was submerged completely in nature. To his right, down a cliff a few yards away, was the wide blue ocean that reflected the blue, blue sky. To his left, was Lance and the bluff of low shrubbery and dried grass that stretched so far, only a blurred line of green trees indicated the end. The trail was a wooden boardwalk, creaky and chipped with age. Lance’s arm by him swung as he walked, the sun refracted off his sunglasses and his teeth when he smiled over at Keith. 

It was peaceful. Neither of them spoke much, both were content with taking in the pocket of nature around them.

“How are you actually doing, Keith?” Lance broke the mood fifteen minutes into their stroll. 

Keith slowed his walk, eyes drawn to the blue horizon. “Not . . . not good at all. My skin’s too sensitive, I can’t smell, my hearings going in and out. It’s hard to sleep, and almost as hard to wake up. My body’s giving out on me.”

“I’m sorry.” Lance said it so quietly Keith barely heard him over the gentle buzzing that was a constant presence in his ear now. “You’re dying, and we haven’t done much to help. You should be doing something worthwhile instead of hanging around this backwater town.”

“Stop that.” Keith’s gaze snapped back to Lance, blue horizon forgotten to send a glare at Lance’s even bluer eyes. “If this is anyone’s fault, it’s mine. You guys are doing everything you can to help me, and it’s my own fault for pissing someone off or whatever to put such a nasty curse on me.”

“But still-” 

“Don’t,” Keith said harshly. He grabbed Lance’s arm, skin warm under his palm. They stopped walking, their pace already slower than a wander. “Drop it. We’re out here on the bluff, we have sandwiches, we both are doing okay now. Don’t apologize, don’t worry.” Keith trailed his hand down Lance’s arm, letting his fingers touch Lance’s. He was scared Lance would pull away and shake the anxiety back into Keith, but in this moment he wanted nothing more than to just enjoy the moment with Lance.

Lance hooked his fingers into Keith’s and chewed on his lower lip. Keith wanted to kiss that lip.

A sharp slap echoed through Keith’s bones. Kiss? What? His heart, already beating a little too fast due to the walk, beat even faster. A tickling sensation made its way up his stomach to his chest. It felt exhilarating. 

“I’ll try.” Lance finally said. They continued walking. Keith was more aware of Lance’s presence next to him, could feel his hand brushing up against his as they walked. The warmth of his shoulder bumping gently into his, the sound of his even breaths that weren’t nearly as shallow as Keith’s. It took everything in Keith’s power not to grab Lance’s hand and hold the fuck out of it.

They found a nice spot not long after, far enough from the neighborhood they couldn’t see it. A bench carved from driftwood sat toward the edge of the bluff looking out onto the sea. Lance plopped down first and started tugging their food and drinks from the basket. Keith sat down and took a heavy sip of water. He wasn’t sweating, but his skin felt so hot. The sandwiches, though lukewarm now, were really delicious. The pies were probably one of the best ones he’s ever had (except for Krolia’s, of course). They scarfed down their food, Keith hadn’t eaten since last night and Lance early that morning. The thermos, Keith found out, was still warm herbal tea Hunk had brewed for Keith and Lance. 

“Something about bad vibes and good luck?” Lance said. “I wasn’t totally listening, but it tastes great.”

Keith hummed in agreement, the earlier fatigue from the walk was washed away. He tasted rosemary and lavender, and hints of other, weaker notes his numb tongue couldn’t quite decipher. It was nice, and he felt refreshed after a cup.

They stayed on the bench a little while longer, eyes on the beach below and hands just brushed against each other. It was maddening. Keith realize now of all times he might have a big, fat crush on a cute witch who lives just kind of too far away to make it work if, hypothetically speaking, he liked him back. He doubted.

It was almost five when they decided to head back. 

“Wait. Let’s go down to the beach for a bit.” Lance took Keith off the side of the bluff and around the side of the outer house, completely missing the parking lot

Keith let Lance drag him down the hills to the rocky beach. Sunset wasn’t for another hour, but the sky was alight in bright golds and pinks, the clouds were brushstrokes of muted sunlight. Small families and couples were scattered across the beach, bundled up in coats and long pants to fight the chill of the ocean wind. Keith couldn’t help but shiver. 

They wandered down the beach, passing the little groups of tourists and to a more secluded spot. Keith felt his whole body flush at the idea of Lance taking him over here to do. . .  something with him.

Lance knelt by the shoreline, the waves lapped at his bare toes. His sneakers were removed and thrown back to the dryer part of the beach with the picnic basket. 

“What are you doing?” Keith knelt down next to him. 

From his pocket Lance protruded a little wooden bobbin. “Making you something cool. Back up for a second.”

Keith complied and shuffled back. 

Lance stayed knelt in the shoreline, ankles of his pants soaked and hand hovering over the surf. The tide came in and Lance reached in and pinched the incoming surf. The sea was pulled back, but the bit he pinched unravelled from the water. He pulled a fine line of seawater from the surf and stood. He tied the thread of water tightly to the bobbin and started to real in the shore. The dying light glittered off the shimmering thread he pulled from the water, thicker than actual thread but slimmer than a cord. When the bobbin was full, he pulled tiny, gold scissors from his pocket and snipped the end. The remaining water snapped back into the sea and was pulled away from the shore. 

“Sea thread?” Keith asked. Sea witches could manipulate ocean water to an extent, wove items out of thread made by sea water and charmed it. 

“Sea thread. I’m not done, though.” Lance walked back up the beach where his shoes and basket sat and plopped down next to them. Keith followed and sat next to him. 

Lance worked quickly and skillfully, taking the scissors back out and clipping out measured strands of the shimmering thread that seemed to move on its own. Keith watched his hands weave the threads together in intricate knots. They spoke softly, but not a lot, with each other as Lance worked on whatever he was making. 

Sunset was a half hour away by the time Lance finished. He presented the item with a flourish to Keith. 

“Stick out your hand.” Keith did. Lance’s moonstone ring glinted gold in the light. Lance wrapped the silvery blue bracelet around his wrist a couple times and tied it off into a knot. “There you go. It’s blessed, so it’s not totally useless.”

Keith didn’t even care if it was blessed or not. It’s from Lance and that’s all he cared about. “Thank you, it’s beautiful.” He examined the bracelet. It was cool against his skin, and heavier than thread.

He didn’t know what to do with himself. Lance was sitting so close, their hands touching atop the pebbly ground. Keith looked over at Lance’s face, framed by the sunset glow that highlighted the planes of his face and the freckles on his nose. His eyes looked grey in the golden light, washed out by all the warmth around him. Lance’s eyes flitted down to look at Keith’s lips, as if he was being sneaky. Keith caught the motion, and decided to say fuck it and throw all caution to the wind.

He leaned in and gave Lance’s soft lips a gentle peck. The kiss lasted only a second, barely a brush of their lips. They pulled back, Lance was wide eyed and flushed. Keith probably looked the same. Lance leaned back in and gave Keith a firmer, longer kiss. He could taste Lance’s tea and the salt of the sea this time, feel the warmth from his body so close to his own shivering one. Lance cupped his cheek and deepened the kiss, Keith’s hand with the sea-threaded bracelet came up to rest under his jaw. It was the softest, sweetest, most tender kiss Keith has ever had in his life.

When they pulled back the sun was gone, twilight settling in around them. The pink was a soft lavender with the blue etching in from the east. 

“I really like you,” Keith sighed. He could ignore the rocks in his butt and the palm of his hand if he could stay like this with Lance a little longer.

“I hope you do if you kissed me like that.” Lance smiled softly. He jerked back to cough into his arm, wet and hollow. 

“Let’s get out of here, you’re still recovering.” Keith couldn’t raise his voice, scared to break the spell that’s been cast over them.

“Do you want to have some wine at my place?” Lance flushed harder and reeled back. “Not-not like that that’s moving way too fast. I mean a literal glass of wine and some uh, conversation. Maybe some. . . cuddling or something if you’re into that?”

“If we can talk about us, then yes. I’d love to.” Keith smiled and pulled Lance in to place a kiss on his cheek.

Keith ended up staying the night. In Lance’s bed, in his pajamas, wrapped in his arms. It was nice being back at his house, and he couldn’t believe how quickly he had realized his crush, kissed said boy, confessed, then discussed their potentially fledgling relationship over a bottle of wine. 

Krolia had extended her stay to September third, the day after the ritual. The inn was getting stifling, so she relocated the three of them to a little rental house only a few blocks away from Lance’s cottage for the remaining two weeks. They saw each other every single day, took turns staying at each other’s houses, and were overall never far from one another. Maybe it was the initial honeymoon phase that had Hunk walking in on them in Lance’s kitchen swapping spit, but everyone in the group learned about their relationship pretty quickly. 

The newfound, tentative relationship with one Lance McClain put a honey-colored lense over everything. There was an ominous, dark cloud lurking over the horizon that spelled Keith’s demise and Lance’s heartbreak, but with the feeling of Lance’s hand in his own and lips on his cheek he doesn’t seem to care. A timer of two weeks was set above their head, two weeks before it ended and Keith went home, the summer he spent in this little beach town with a charming boy put in the box of memories. He hoped beyond anything, even prayed to Ra, that this wouldn’t end up as a summer fling.

Summer came to a close all too quickly. Foot traffic around main street and the beaches slowly died down at the end of the month until it suddenly exploded for Labor Day weekend. September first, the day before the ritual, was the first day of a three day festival the sleepy beach town held. Keith, Lance, Krolia and Cosmo, Allura, Hunk, and Pidge visited the main street for a couple hours and watched the parade. Keith had gripped Lance’s hand tight the whole time, not daring to let go just yet when the next day would determine his fate.

He arrived at Allura’s house with Krolia and Lance an hour before sunset on September second, exactly seven days before the new moon. The power of decrease should aid them, paired with the mystic number seven and under the waning moon. Krolia gave him a firm hug and Lance a gentle kiss on the forehead before Allura ushered him into the bedroom he had stayed in to strip and bathe in the pre-ritual bath she and Lance had prepared for him. Charmed candles floated in the bathroom instead of the electrical lights, Allura taking no chances. Once done, he dried off and wrapped himself in the fluffy bathrobe she’d left hanging on the door.

He passed a mirror on his way back out, only to pause and take in his reflection just for a moment. His skin looked paper thin and grey, his eyes hollow and lips cracked. Peeking out from his robes was the jutted collarbones and indents of ribs. He was a corpse, with lank hair and blank eyes, on his way to meet his final resting ground. He had to remove the sea-spun bracelet and moonstone ring for this. He gently tucked them into his leather jacket’s pocket for safe keeping.

Lance and Krolia stayed inside the parlor with Hunk and Pidge, refreshments and appetizers served for them in the meantime. 

Allura was waiting for him by the back door, clad in a simple, white gown that brushed the ground. She held the door open for him then clicked it shut behind them. The deck had a staircase that lead down onto the hillside ground, where a path illuminated by charmed candles floated above their heads marked the way to the circle she had set up. The rocks and pine needles hurt the sensitive skin of his feet, and to think he’ll have to lay ass down on this for who knows how long. 

Only a few yards from her deck laid a ring of stones within a clearing of trees. On a mat by the ring was the pile of supplies; Allura’s Grimoire, bowls, herbs, crystals, more non-charmed candles, incense, a little gold bell, a black cloth, and bottles of oil. She nodded toward the circle and took the bathrobe from Keith. Shivering, he stepped over the line and hesitated. He held his hands firmly in front of his crotch, the cold, ocean wind sent goosebumps across his skin. 

Allura sensed his discomfort and out a warm hand on his back. “I have a girlfriend, relax.”

Keith jumped and craned his neck to see her. “I didn’t know you swung that way.”

She gave him a wry smile and jerked her thumb toward the house, where Lance was at. “I didn’t know you did either. Promise I won’t look?”

He nodded and laid down, hands still lingering to give himself at least some decency. She clicked her tongue. “Hands flat on the ground, Kogane. You need to be centered and focused. Do a grounding exercise while I get everything set up.”

“Aye aye, capt’n,” he muttered and closed his eyes. It only took a few moments to level his breathing and ground himself, the pine needles and rocks digging into his back and butt made it easy. 

Then she began. Twilight disappeared and was replaced by the indigo sky and a navy horizon. The half moon shined brilliantly without a cloud to obstruct her light. He couldn’t turn his head to look, but he could hear her clinking around and mixing stuff into a bowl.The sea salt, he figured.

“Breath deeply and let it fill you.” She stuck a sprig of fresh rosemary under his nose. He inhaled the sharp scent and let it wash through his as instructed. She walked counter clockwise with the bowl of salt water and rosemary, dipping the sprig in the bowl and flicking the water around the perimeter as she chanted softly, “ _ Cleansed by water and by earth. Cleansed by water and by earth.”  _  After her lap around, she sprinkled water on Keith then set the bowl and rosemary down and said “You are cleansed.”

His skin burned with a slight tingle where the salt water touched him. Allura lit a bundle of dried sage, the acacia stick Krolia had brought tied in the middle, and walked the perimeter clockwise this time and chanted “ _ Charged by fire and by air. Charged by fire and by air.”  _ Again, she let the smoke waft over Keith and finished with, “You are charged.” 

The smoke and salt left his skin buzzing and hot, his limbs light and head full of cotton. The mass of oil that flooded his veins were vibrating with  _ something.  _

They had discussed in detail what to do beforehand, which parts Keith had to do by himself and how. Allura couldn’t do the whole ritual for him, simply guide him. He took three, deep breaths and opened up his mind to his “deity”, felt them touch his consciousness with a golden finger atop his forehead. The cotton cleared, and the lightness increased. His body drifted up, magnified by Allura’s powers and the ritual itself, and levitated maybe a foot from the ground. He was glad to have the pine needles off his ass finally. Between each breath he murmured “ _ Blessed by spirit.”  _ After the final, deep exhale, he opened his eyes and said, “I am blessed.”

Not wanting to break the trance, the magick within the ring that held Keith wrapped up snug and opened his body to reveal the oil spill in his veins, she continued onto the next step. She lit the blue and black candles she anointed with oils and placed the amethyst between them, The murmured a chant, low whispers that Keith could barely hear. The flames flickered. They were the only source of light beside the moon. She sprinkled a ring of salt around the candles and rang the bell three times. His skin was boiling.

She passed an onyx through the smoke and dipped her finger in the bowl of salt water to draw a five pointed star on the stone. The crystal was placed on his forehead, the skin stung where it laid. 

“ _ Vessel of Life, now turned to death. Turned, corrupted, changed, enchanted,”  _ She chanted softly, her voice barely rose above a whisper. “ _ Remove from him the dreaded curse, become a vessel for its evil." _

It happened too fast. Keith dropped to the ground hard and the onyx shattered, scraping his skin with the shards. Allura yelped in alarm, and a blinding flash of light filled the air above him. The tingling on his skin turned to full on burning, hot rolling pains that licked his skin as his blood boiled him alive from the inside out. He could feel blood trickling down his forehead. There was a loud hiss, the stench of sulfur filled the air.

He blurrily blinked his eyes open. The circle of trees above him framed the dark sky laden in a scatter of twinkling stars. His ears were ringing, Allura’s words muffled like she had a pillow to her face. 

Golden eyes and a malicious smile was all he saw before they evaporated into the night air. It was only a glimpse, but the rolling oil and goop that filled his blood and bones responded to those eyes. It rolled up to meet the smoke, swelled until Keith’s skin was pulled taut. 

Keith breathed heavily, blinking the black spots from his vision as he stared up into the night sky, making out the beginnings or Orion and Taurus. 

“Keith,” Allura breathed, her voice quivered. “Are you alright?”

He took a second to catch his breath, heart beating harsh in his ears. “What happened?”

“You’re still cursed,” she said somberly. She stood up and went to hover over him, starlight hair blocked the heavens above him. He could not see her face in the dark, the candles having been snuffed out. “But tell me, what was your brother’s name?”

“Takashi Shirogane, but we called him Shiro.” His voice sounded foreign to his ears. “Why? What does he have to do with this?”

“Let’s get you inside first and I’ll explain everything.” She helped him up and brushed pine needles from his back and hair. She paused. “Do you want me to get your butt?”

“No, just gimme the robe.” He was shaking like a newborn deer, legs filled with jelly and the ground seemed to tilt and spin around him. She helped him slip on the plush bathrobe and kept an arm around him as she lead him down the path back toward the house. 

Neither of them said a word. The candles that lined the walkway to the house were snuffed out and on the ground. As they climbed up the staircase, one of the kitchen curtains twitched. There was frantic scuffling in the other room when they entered through the back door. 

Everyone was sitting stock still and rigid, feigned relaxed. Lance lounged across the chaise with a stiffness to his back, Hunk had a sweat over his brow, Pidge was reading a book upside down, and Krolia clutched a full cup of tea. No one spoke when they entered, tension palpable in the air. 

“It’s not a Gnochborne,” Allura announced. “It’s worse.”

Keith stiffened under her arm, toes curled against the cold, wood floors. Everyone sat up to attention. 

“There’s a soul trapped to him, sucking away at his magick and life energy. The soul isn’t there by choice, but is bonded through the means of Dark Magick. It’s a branch of the original Gnochborne curse, in which the soul is tethered to your body and is used as a cable to suck away your magick and life force back into the universe.” 

It clicked. “Shiro.”

Allura nodded solemnly. “Only the soul of someone close would be able to latch onto you properly. This was a sinister plot from the very beginning to get you in the worst way possible.”

Krolia shot to her feet, cup of tea sloshed down her hand and soaked her sleeve. “Someone killed one of my boys to make the other one suffer a slow, painful death?” She rounded on Keith. “Who the fuck did you piss off so bad they wanted to make you suffer this much?” She pinched the end of his ear and tugged him up toward her, using her whole head of height over him to her advantage. 

“Ow ow  _ ow Mom!”  _ Keith hissed. “I don’t know, okay? I know I piss off people, but I don’t think anyone that bad to warrant this?”

“Did you like, punch a really evil, dark witch?” Lance finally spoke up. He had shifted from lounging to sitting with his hands on his knees, back ramrod straight.

“I punched one, maybe two witches.” He paused. “That I know of. Both of which were asshole jerks and totally deserved it, but I don’t think either of those situations would warrant Shiro to die.”

“No, this is a really dark, old curse. Only a handful of witches would know how to do it and even less would be likely to do it,” Allura explained. “Keith, if my calculations are correct, you still have until January to live. A Soul Requiem Gnochborne is much more slow moving, especially if it’s your uh, brother that’s doing the life sucking. If it was a malicious spirit, then they’d be intentionally draining you faster. You need to keep your moods in check, and a healthy diet to keep your body as healthy as possible to combat it, slow it’s progress.”

Krolia had released his ear and wrapped an arm around him instead. “Unless Shiro is mad at Keith about something, but Shiro wouldn’t hurt Keith like that,” said Krolia. Her voice broke toward the end. She wasn’t over what happened to Shiro, either. Of course she wasn’t. 

“What do we do now?” Hunk asked.

“We start from scratch,” Lance said. “Third time’s the charm, right?”

Allura nodded. “The power of three. It might be fate, that lead us through three tries. They wanted you here for something, Keith.”

Keith couldn’t help but let his eyes trail over to where Lance sat. Lance met his eyes and shot him a wink. 

Allura clapped her hands. “We’re going to crack down on this. We need two months to get this down perfectly so Keith can live to see the new year. Pidge, you’ll be on my team with Coran, Romelle, and I to track down the witch who did this. Hunk and Lance, there’s some things I need you to gather.”

She turned to Keith and Krolia, eyes softened. Her hair was wild, a cloud ready to storm atop her head. “And you two can go home. Rest up, do your business. We’ll all meet again on All Hallows’ Eve.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyo so i intended this to be up oct 30, but i havent gone to bed yet so its oct 30 to me still. the last part isnt quite done but ill do everything in my power to get that up by the end of this weekend, hopefully sooner!  
> comments, kudos, the works give me Life


	3. The Desert Grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith goes back to his shack in the desert and he only has less than four months left to live

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm a piece of SHIT this was supposed to be up on Halloween night but as you can see... it is NOT halloween night.... THANK you so much for sticking with me for this, I had a lot of fun writing this and glad it's all off my chest.  
> Anyway there's gonna be an epilogue so don't mind that added chapter. It's prob gonna be up later this week.   
> This is for u jasper, my sweet summer child

They went back to his little tin shack in the desert. It’s been a long time, over two months since he’s been home. Kolivan had kept an eye on it for him, but a good layer of dust had collected in the air.

He let out a heavy sigh as soon as he opened the door, his bag dropped to the floor unceremoniously. Cosmo bounded into the shack ahead of him, tail wagging harder than it has in a while.The place was small, a singular room with a kitchenette, a dining table, and a couch on one side and his bed and wardrobe on the other. The windows were large enough to make the space seem bigger. He took the time to throw open all the curtains and windows, letting natural light filter through the dusty air. He took his unpacking us stuff, the got cleaning supplies out to mop up all the dust. He refused to sit down until it was all done because he knew he won’t get back up once he’s collapsed on his bed. He had bought one of Lance’s windchimes at that tiny corner store on the way out of town and hung it on his porch. The familiar ringing soothed the tension in his back.

He ate dinner alone for the first time in a while, an egg sandwich he made and some orange juice.

It felt like a dream in that moment, sitting at his little table cluttered with loose sheets of paper and rocks. He faced one of the wide windows, where the end of summer sunset glowed at the horizon and turn the sky pink. It hurt to look at, but he wanted to absorb the desert scenery while it was still light out. He went to bed early that night, after a phone call with Lance to wish him goodnight. He didn’t sleep until almost sunrise. 

A knock on the door was his alarm the next morning. He pulled himself from his bed and stumbled over to the tentative knocks.

Mid-morning sun blinded him. Adam stood there, framed in the white-hot light with tousled, brown hair and his tanned skin looking paler than Keith’s ever seen him. He was gaunt, eyes heavy with shadows and bloodshot behind his narrow glasses. The tank top he wore hung off his frame. 

“Adam?” He asked, throat full of frogs and eyes watery with light. 

“Hey, Keith,” Adam said. His voice was low, so soft Keith had to strain to hear. “Sorry to wake you up, I wanted to see how you’re doing.”

“I’m fine. Get in here, the sun hurts.” He could feel the sun burning his skin, and it was still muted by its morning sleep. 

Adam awkwardly stepped into Keith’s little hovel and took a seat at the little dining table, back to the wide window Keith watched the sunset from the previous night. Keith went to the bathroom real quick to pee and splash water on his face before stumbling back out, slightly more awake. 

“Want tea? Or I could make us breakfast,” Keith offered, already putting a kettle on the stove. Mint tea sounded good. 

“Coffee’s fine,” Adam said. Keith nodded and pulled the French press and ground beans from his cabinet. Neither of them said a word while Keith prepared himself toast and their drinks, nor when he’d settled down and chewed idly on the dry bread, the hot mist of the tea moistening the skin under Keith’s chin. Adam, like Shiro, drank his coffee straight, black, and scalding hot.

“Adam.” No use beating around the bush, Keith figured. “What happened on the night Shiro disappeared?”

Adam stopped sipping his coffee, loudly, and gently put the mug down. His eyes drifted from Keith to the window beside them, looking out to the little shed Keith had and the flat, beige landscape. 

“I need to know what happened to Shiro, Adam,” Keith said firmly. His voice was still hoarse around the edges, not due to sleep, but the curse was reaching its slimy fingers deeper into him. “It has something to do with this curse on me. I could die if we don’t have all the information.”

Adam looked over from the window, gaze heavy behind his clouded glasses. “Keith, I want to apologize for how I acted after that. You deserve to know, Krolia deserves to know. I was. . . I was in a terrible place and I couldn’t handle anything maturely like I should have.”

“ _ Please _ , tell me what happened.” Keith was begging him. 

“Is it because Shiro is hanging off of you now?” Adam asked firmly. He’s a necromancer, of course he knows Shiro is here. “What happened, Keith?”

Keith paused. The words stuck to his throat, but he spit out the hard molasses for Adam’s sake. “He’s trapped, his soul is linked to me by the curse. He’s stuck here until I die, or the curse breaks and he can pass on, hopefully.”

Adam sucked in a sharp breath. Keith couldn’t look up from his tasteless toast. He continued. “All Hallows’ Eve we will hold the final ritual, the one that should free us both. If this doesn’t work, we both are dead before the new year.” He finally looked up, felt the fire burn the oil in his veins. “You’re the key to figuring out exactly what happened. You need to tell me everything.”

The air was filled with silence and dust motes, glimmering in the morning sun. Adam traced the rim of the coffee mug without meeting Keith’s gaze. Outside the window behind Adam, a dusty qual hopped out from under one of the tall cacti and flapped onto a large rock, beak posed toward the hazy mountains in the horizon, toward Lance and the sea. 

“We were cornered.” Adam finally spoke. His words echoed in the little, tin room. Their drink were cold at this point, but the sun was warming up their bare arms and faces. “We were out about a mile east, at the base of the mountains where there was an abundant of different flora and fauna, by an old acacia tree. She brought the dry thunderstorm with her.”

“Who?” Keith leaned forward, hoping to catch Adam’s words with his ears. 

“I don’t know, she never told us her name.”

“Did she look familiar?” This could be a witch with a grudge.

“No. She was old, decrepit, and powerful.” Adam sucked in a shuddering breath. “She didn’t have a wand, used only her voice to chant her spell in Latin. Shiro fell to the ground, screaming in pain. I begged her to stop, he was in agony. She sneered at me and continued her ritual. She threw ash on him and he- he  _ dissolved.  _ God, Keith.” Adam choked, hands quivering as he wiped a stray tear from under his glasses. “It was the most morbid thing I’d ever seen. His body was stripped and melted away until there was nothing left. He fell into the earth. She dissolved into smoke and disappeared.”

Keith, already cold, was drenched in ice. The oily sludge in his veins writhed, spiked and sharp against his tender insides. His joints ached, and would definitely creak if he moved. But he couldn’t move a damn muscle. His breath was caught in his throat, choked back with tears fighting to spill over. He died in pain, he died screaming in agony. He died as he melted like a candle, burned into a heaped, waxy goo at the bottom until there was nothing left to burn. His own hands shook holding the mug up to take a weak sip of lukewarm tea. 

“Why did she do that?” Keith asked evenly, strangely detached from the situation.

Adam shook his head. “Because she’s evil? I don’t know, witches overrun with Black Magick tend to do crazy, evil shit just because they can.”

They sat in stiff silence after that. They finished their tea, forced in down their thick throats in an attempt to fill the space with something. They talked of a memorial service for him after the curse is lifted, of white lilies and chrysanthemum and a somber service for their family and friends. 

Adam left before lunch, hands deep in his jean pockets and eyes faraway and glazed. The gold engagement ring hung on a chain around his neck.

Keith lost his sense of taste by the full moon at the end of September, one of his first senses to go. He was surprised it lasted so long, yet wasn’t with how sensitive a tongue could be. His tea just felt hot, his food felt hard, and his oatmeal felt absolutely terrible in his mouth. Without taste, he ate less and spit out most food based on the awful texture alone. He couldn’t smell as much, either, his sense of smell near absent to the point that he could only smell the strongest bonfire at night or the rotting carcass of a desert kit fox. It took him longer to blink the haze from his eyes in the morning, finding himself stumbling around his usual morning routine blindly, until he found himself on the wicker chair out on his porch overlooking the bleached horizon, blinking slowly until his vision cleared enough to start his day. His skin always felt like fire, he would get sunburns even if he got too close to a window a little too long. He was used to the hot pink flesh of his arms and cheeks peeling away to the soft, baby skin, only to be burned off once again. Clothes were the worst thing ever, yet his only salvation from burning every part of his body. He couldn’t hear the quiet, desert sounds anymore. The ringing filled up his days.

He relayed the information that Adam told him to Allura. She said she knows who did it and they have the location for the ritual.

Kolivan came over with his partner Ulaz, a local healer, to conducted daily rituals to hold the curse at bay for at least a little bit. He wasn’t nearly as powerful as Allura, let alone Lance, but it did the job. 

He missed Lance dearly. They talked on the phone, his volume turned all the way up and pressed into the tender skin of his ear just to hear Lance’s soothing voice. He tried to keep the tremor from his voice when they spoke about the curse. He didn’t want Lance to know how scared he truly was. 

Early October, almost a month after Keith’s return to his little desert town, Lance arrived. They feverishly embraced, the salt still clinging to Lance’s lips from the ocean wind of his own little beach town he hailed from. It was the first taste of salt on his tongue he’s had in a while. Lance put his suitcase by the rocking chair next to the door and released his cat from her harness to explore Keith’s house.He wrapped his wiry arms around Keith’s waist and surveyed the tiny shack, Keith leaned a heavy head onto Lance’s broad shoulder, eyes slipping shut. He was so relaxed now, with Lance back at his side. 

They spent the night cuddled up in Keith’s bed, whispering like they did on the phone, but able to caress each other’s faces under the shadows of the starry night. They kissed, kissed a lot and kissed heavily. When Keith woke up with his shirt thrown across the room and love bites bit into his chest, he didn’t think he could be more pleasantly happy than he was in that moment with Lance’s naked arm thrown across his warm waist and pajama-clad leg over his own. 

Krolia made Lance one of her lemon pies that day. He moaned into the fork, with Cosmo’s head laid heavily in his lap. The three of them sat on Krolia’s wraparound porch, overlooking the rocky outcrops of the dry landscape dotted with bits of dried green and flashes of white. The sky was endlessly blue, despite being October already. Fall never came around here, and winter was cold and only rarely brought snow. 

The day before Lance arrived, Krolia had Keith over for brunch. 

“You really like this boy, huh?” She said out of the blue.

Keith blinked. “Well, yeah. He’s a pretty great boyfriend.”

She smiled, her age finally showing in her eyes that were so similar to his own. “He’s a sweet kid, and I trust him to take care of you.” She took a sip of her overly sweet iced tea. “But just know I  _ will  _ fuck him up if I gotta.”

He’d passed that message along to Lance, and Lance was now a little skittish around Krolia. She smiled a leering smile at his surprised jumps, the twitch in his hands when taking something from her.

It was wonderful having Lance all to himself, able to truly enjoy their time alone together in Keith’s little shack in the middle of nowhere. There was no Hunk to walk in on them, no Pidge to knock down their doors, and especially no Allura taking Keith or Lance away for work. 

Cosmo, on the other hand, lived to invade their space. He was like a cat in some ways: sullen and lazy, never really made a sound unless something catches his eye outside, and liked to sit as close as possible to receive head scratches and belly rubs. He never asked for them, but always leaned in close and wiggled in between them on the bed if he felt he wasn’t included. There’s been a few unfortunate times where things were getting really good between him and Lance, and Cosmo would plop down at the foot of the bed to stare them down until they tucked themselves away and acknowledged him. 

Lance’s cat, his familiar named Blue whom Keith felt bad he never bothered to learn her name until recently (he was too shy to ask and then it was too late to do so without it being weird) was just as bad. She loved to snuggle up with Lance in the wicker chair by the door, and slept crowned above his head like a fluffy hat. She would go out with them almost as often as Cosmo did, on a harness and rode atop Lance’s shoulders until she would wiggle down and sniff at the dry shrub or chase after a scurrying lizard. The two familiars got along great, thankfully. Cosmo and Blue would sprawl out in the late afternoon sun that spilled across the floor together, play fight, and even cuddle up in the bed with them. When Blue wasn’t tucked up against Lance’s side, she’d cuddle up with Cosmo on his big dog bed. 

Blue was, unfortunately, as much as a menace as Cosmo when it came to Keith and Lance sharing loving kisses and curling up in bed together. She would saddle up to the bed and chirp at them until they gave her attention and one of her toys to play with. It was like the two of them would tag team who is going to interrupt them this time.

Nonetheless, Lance didn’t let this deter him from their romantic endeavors. He woke Keith up with coffee and breakfast, stood by his side as they washed dishes, did his utmost to keep the hovel clean when Keith got too tired to keep up with maintaining it. It was so damn domestic, even Keith’s sweet tooth could barely handle the sugary feeling Lance gave him. They’d sit out in the yard, drinking wine and whatever snack Lance could procure, holding hands and watched the sunset fall over the brown mountains. They ran errands together, hand in hand walking down the stalls of the farmer’s market. 

Even on days when Keith couldn’t get himself out of bed, or found himself breathing hard in the shower, Lance would rub soothing circles into his back and whisper the sweetest words into Keith’s ringing ears. 

He jerked awake one night, panting and sweating from nightmares that felt so real they hurt. They’d been happening more often as All Hallows’ Eve approached. He shook Lance awake, fear drenched his body in a cold sweat.

Lance groaned awake, but was immediately alert at the blurred sight of Keith’s panic. 

“Why are you here? Why are you with me? You can die! You’ll die! You can’t die!” Keith was rambling, his lips barely catching the words before they tumbled out. Blurred images of Lance melting, melting, gone. Back into the ground, in a gooey pile of flesh and liquified bones. Just like Shiro. 

Lance was wide awake now. He gripped Keith’s fluttering hands and pulled him into a gentle hug. He whispered, “Calm down it’s okay. I’m okay, see? It was just a dream we’re both alive and okay.” 

He let Lance’s gentle murmuring wash over him, like a sweet mantra that washed away the shaking fear that wracked his bones and choked his lungs. Lance lead him through breathing exercises, and soothed his pounding heart. He was still shivering, drenched in a clammy sweat, but Lance held him tight and ran a warm hand through his damp hair. 

“You can’t be here,” Keith spoke, finally after his lungs weren’t threatening to implode. “The miasma will kill you.” It was stupid, but he just remembered what had happened last time Lance stayed with him on close quarters. Now they were basically having sex, he was more exposed to it than ever. 

“I already thought of that,” Lance said. Keith couldn’t see his face, but he could hear the smile. “For one, I low key already developed an immunity. I have a talisman, too. And every morning I drop a little of one of Allura’s oils into my tea as a sort of antidote to the miasma in the air. There’s also cleansing baths I take once a week with herbs from Hunk and a handy-dandy cleansing spell infused with the water,” Lance reaches into the collar of his loose sleep shirt and tugged out a black cord with a pendant on it. Bathed in the silvery moonlight streaming through the window, a circular obsidian with a polished surface, smoothed and glassy like a black mirror. It hung from a blue bead, a glass evil eye pendant. The oil in him recoiled from the sight of it. He’d see it a few times around Lance’s neck, has felt it’s reflective presence, but never bothered to ask. 

He felt a bit silly now, for doubting Lance and his abilities. It also flattered him to think that Lance would go so far to stay with Keith. His heart clenched. 

They settled back down into the bed, moonlight illuminating the space with Her ethereal glow. Keith could trace the sharp outline of Lance’s profile, make out the blue of his eyes and the darker freckles that dotted his face under the bright light. A breeze would work through the cracked open window and ruffled Lance’s mused bangs. He was staring straight at Keith, eyes heavy with sleep, but alive. 

“Let’s go on a date tomorrow,” Keith said finally, sleepily. “I have a spot I want to take you to. It’s really nice.”

“Will you be okay? Does it involve a lot of walking?” He could hear the concern lacing Lance’s words. 

“A little bit. I’ll be fine.” He reached up and traced an idle finger over his sharp cheekbone and down his slim jaw. He placed a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth. Lance turned to capture Keith’s lips as he pulled away, dove in to make it longer, deeper, sweeter. They laid there kissing idly, hands brushing across warm skin and soft gasps locked in the space between them. 

Cosmo broke them up. He crawled atop the bed with a soft whimper in the back of his throat and wiggled into the nonexistent space between them, placing his wet muzzle on the pillow and pressed his cheeks into their faces. Lance and Keith couldn’t help but laugh and move over to make room for him. 

The next day, Lance and Keith went into town on Keith’s bike. Lance rode it, and Keith sat on the back. Cosmo ran alongside them, tongue lolled out and lips pulled back in a doggy grin, his red bandana tied around his neck per Lance’s request (“He looks like a very good boy with his bandana on,” Lance had explained). Blue sat in the basket in front of them, her blue harness secured to the handles so she wouldn’t suddenly jump out to chase a stray ground squirrel. The sun was especially terrible today, painfully bright and itched at Keith’s overly sensitive skin. 

They stopped the farmer’s market and bought fresh fruit and vegetables to make themselves dinner with. Lance and Keith made a packaged lunch of lettuce wraps, potato salad, fruit bowls, and Cuban fritters for dessert (a recipe Lance found online, but swore they probably won’t be as good as his tia’s). They packed it all up in a picnic basket with a cloth to lay on, utensils, a bottle of red wine, and a jug of water. It was a lot to carry, but Keith was able to drag along the water, wine, and glasses in a separate bag to be at least a little helpful.

Around four-thirty, they left their familiars with bowls of wet food and took Keith’s bike as far as they could, Lance huffing and puffing until Keith forced him to stop and leave the bike there. The bike was teetering dangerously and he was scared to drop the bottle of wine. They trekked the rest of the way up, a shallow slope that wrapped through the hills along a scraggly path. 

The place Keith wanted to show Lance was roughly two miles from his house, and the top of a hill that overlooked the valley Keith lived in. The town, a few miles out, was a sprawl of dim lights in the fading glow of daylight. They set up their little picnic and arranged themselves under a Joshua tree. The food was delicious, light, and healthy- which was good for Keith’s weakening stomach. He’s unable to eat anything grossly processed or unhealthy anymore, forcing Lance and him to splurge a little more on organic fruits and vegetables, wheat breads, and whole grains.Though, Keith admits he missed potato chips and soda. Lance made the food good enough even Keith’s muted tongue could taste a little of how delicious it was. 

It was relaxing, and oh so sweet with Lance’s hand intertwined with his and a wine glass in the other. A soft flush illuminated under the sunset graced his smooth cheeks.Their first kiss, their confession, their first time, every important moment together Keith felt had been under the golden sunset. Keith expressed this to Lance.

“The sunset’s our time,” Lance agreed. His hand tightened around Keith’s. “It’s beautiful, yet so brief. I’m gonna get metaphysical, but it reminds me of life’s fleeting beauty- youth, love, fame. It can’t last, so we gotta enjoy it while we can, you know?”

“The twilight is pretty, too” Keith said.

“You’re pretty.”

Keith flushed. The wine was getting to him, he convinced himself. Not Lance’s stupid attempts at flirting.

He loved Lance’s charm. In fact, he loved Lance a hell of a lot.

“Hey, Lance?” Keith asked, tentatively. He put his heart out in his sleeve, just this once. Lance hummed in response, cracking open the container of the Cuban fritters. “I love you.”

Lance froze, toothpick with the fritter slipped off and plopped back into the Tupperware. “Holy shit, I love you too, Keith,” he giggled. His flush was deeper, his eyes sparkling and full of a deep affection that Keith doesn’t think he’s ever seen directed at him before from anyone other than Lance.

“Let’s get married,” Keith breathed, voice lost in the high desert air. 

Lance jerked back, flustered. His hands waved animatedly as he babbled, words spewing from his mouth. “Whoa, okay hey listen. Listen Keith, buddy. We’ve been dating for two months that’s fast that’s waaay too fast. I’m like, twenty-four and I’m still paying off my student loans and- and I love you, don’t let that deter you, but Jesus give us more time before you jump at the sound of wedding bells?”

Keith laughed, boisterous and light. “No-no like, not now. Later. Would you ever consider? If we last together a long time, would you?” Keith certainly did. The past couple weeks with the two of them (and Cosmo and Blue) was probably the best couple weeks in his life. Yeah, he was slowly dying and eroding away from the dark curse, but that didn’t matter with Lance at his side. He’d been thinking about it, thinking about him and Lance maybe a few years from now still living so domestically together. They sort of were already, right? Lance farted in bed a couple nights ago and basically hot boxed them with the hot stench. Isn’t that what married couples do?

Lance slowly ate a couple fritters, a contemplative look on his face as he stared out into the golden horizon. The pinky sky highlighted the flush still on his cheeks. He swallowed and finally spoke. “I think I could. But give us time, you know? Hypothetically speaking, yes. I’d love to marry you. But I love the idea of being in love, you know?” Keith nodded, knowing all too well with Lance and his thing for telenovelas and trashy romance novels. “I want a wedding one day, with my family and friends and of course my partner’s, too. On the beach, or at least outside somewhere. I want to wear a white suit, and have sweet peas and roses and peonies. I promised my little niece I’d have a chocolate fountain, all for her.”

For a brief second, Keith pictured Lance in a form fitting white tuxedo, a pretty, pale pink flower clipped to his chest. The golden light from the beach horizon illuminated his silhouette. He felt his heart lurch, his chest swelled with the pure, molten light of the dream. 

“I’d like that,” Keith said breathlessly. 

Lance licked some of the sugary mess from his fingers and stuck out a sticky hand for Keith to hold. It felt kind of gross, but Keith didn’t mind. “We can come back on this in about a year, okay?”

Keith nodded and reached for the Tupperware to get his own fritter. The dessert was sticky with syrup, moist and richly sweet. He could barely taste it, but it was sweet enough to bypass his taste-block and give Keith an idea how satisfying it is. Shaped like a donut hole, and fluffy on the inside, Keith swallowed maybe four or five of them before he came up for air.

“Lance, you beautiful genius.” Keith licked the sugar from his lips and fingers, savoring the sweet stickiness. He could do without the way his fingers felt tacky. “I want to eat these forever.”

Lance threw his head back with a bark of laughter. He pulled Keith into a sweet, sticky kiss that Keith melted into. He caressed a hand through the hair at Lance’s nape, the hair sticking to his fingers. He drove forward, licking the seam of Lance’s lips to let him in. Lance complied, opening his mouth with a soft moan that Keith ate up. He pushed, taking over the kiss and eased Lance to the ground. Half on top of Lance, Keith was able to devour Lance’s sugary sweet lips with his own, swallowing the breathy moans as Lance took his breath away. He was able to cup Lance’s face, brush a hand along his ribs and trace his sharp hip bone. Lance rested a palm to Keith’s chest, fingers tickling the bare skin of his throat. They laid like that for a while, as the lavender and deep blue streaked the sky above them, erasing the blushing sun with the incoming twilight. 

They made love that night under the rising moon and blooming stars, under the rustling Joshua tree and shadows of the mountains that separated their homes.

The next day they awoke to Allura pounding on Keith’s door. Lance answered, since Keith needed a moment to fully shake sleep off of him and roll himself out of bed. She greeted Lance with a firm hug and dropped her own suitcase by Lance’s empty one (his stuff having intermingled with Keith’s in the wardrobe and dresser). 

“Good news and bad news, you two,” she announced once Keith managed to get himself out of bed and to the kitchen table. He slumped against the wood, minty tea sitting under his nose to help wake him up. 

“Bad news first?” Lance suggested.

“Keith, you’re to a point where the curse is progressing fast enough that if we don’t do something soon, you’ll be dead by November. But good news, there’s a way to slow the curses progress.”

“That’s the good news?” Keith questioned. 

“No, I mean yes, but I have more good news. We found the witch who did this to you and Shiro.” 

The whole rooms atmosphere shifted. Lance and Keith sat up straighter, Cosmo shifted in his spot, sensing the tension. He made a gentle  _ boof _ sound. 

“Who is it, Allura?” Keith asked slowly. His heart was racing, the oily feeling that coated his skin and insides seemed to spike. 

“A dark witch named Haggar,” Allura started. “She. . . she used to be an assistant of my father’s before he passed and was seduced by the dark arts and drawn into Black Magick. She became insane, and disappeared without a trace for a good ten years before her names started popping up. She likes to experiment, use animals and humans alike to practice her Black Magick on.” Allura gulped and ran a shaking hand through her white hair. “She never has a reason for hurting people like so, she just does it because she  _ can.”  _

Keith has never wanted to punch someone more in his life. The black, coiling, nasty feeling of oil running through his veins was ignited by a white-hot anger. She killed his brother, traumatized his fiancé, and slowly killed Keith because she  _ can!?  _

Sensing his anger, Allura raised a defensive hand to run soothingly through his hair. “Look, this is above our jurisdiction at this point. She broke the witch law, and there’s nothing we can do except report her and hope they catch her. She’ll go to trial when she’s caught and you can watch her be executed. For now, we need to focus on getting you better.”

“No!” Keith slammed his fists on the table. Lance jumped and gripped his mug tighter. “She needs to pay by  _ my hands!  _ She took away my  _ life,  _ she killed Shiro only months before his wedding, and you want me to go to the  _ law?! _ ” He could practically hear steam pouring from his ears. “I’m gonna catch her myself and kill her! Rip her to shreds and bring that foul creature’s head to Adam so he may burn that bitch’s head himself.” 

A warm hand gripped his own shaking one. With tears blurring his eyes, he saw Lance rubbing his thumb gently over the chilled skin. Soft words bounced soundlessly off his ears, the ringing was louder than ever. 

“Keith!  _ Keith!”  _ Allura’s voice broke through high pitched sound. Her eyes glowed a piercing blue. A calm washed over him, the buzzing and heat blazed across his skin was dulled to a soft hum. Sated, he slumped back into his seat. She had used her magick on him.

Lance placed a gently kiss on the top of his head and whispered soothing words. Keith took a deep breath to steady himself. 

“Keith,” Allura repeated. “I’m going to take you to the Western Coven, my uncle is there doing research and you’re at critical point that we need to pick up a spell to help slow down the effects. I already sent a notice that we’re coming.”

Keith sat up straight. “But that’s like five hours away at  _ least.”  _ A wave of nausea coursed through him at the thought if sitting in a car for that long.

Allura shook her head. “We’ll travel by broom and get there in three. If we leave now we should be there before by lunch.” 

Lance snorted. “Broom? That’s outdated.”

“But efficient. Cars are good, but everyone has a car these days. We can skip the traffic and hills on broom. Pack an overnight back, Keith, something you can keep on your back.”

An hour later, Lance was kissing him goodbye with Cosmo pressed firmly into his shivering side. He didn’t like the idea of leaving his little shack again so soon, especially with Lance waiting for him, but he would only be gone for a night. He wished he could bring Lance and Cosmo, but a broom had room for only two people and a cat.

Allura’s familiar, a Siamese with intelligent, blue eyes, balanced himself on the broomhandle between Allura’s arms. There was a seat built into the broom, thankfully. He wasn’t in the mood to get a broom wedgie. It’s been a while since he last flew, and he could feel the ghost of his last wedgie at the memory of it.

They took off with a wave at Lance. The perfect image of him, a smile on his tan face and waving with his whole arm goodbye, left Keith feeling a deep longing to be greeted every day like this. The longing pulled a taut string in his chest that grew tighter as he was pulled away from his home and love.

They arrived by lunch at an elegant lighthouse that stood on a point a little offshore. The building didn’t look large, but a majority of the facility laid underground. The antique rug at the main entrance creaked and sank into the ground upon their entrance, taking them down to the lower levels.

“Level four, Department of Magickal Distribution,” a cool, female voice spoke. They stepped off the rug into a waiting room with a front desk. A witch sat tapping away at a keyboard, her nails long and green and sparked with each tap on a key. 

“Hello, do you have an appointment?” She said to Allura. She eyed Keith with a dark look, most likely seeing the miasma seeping from his skin.

“Yes, at 12:45 with Professor Smythe for Altea,” Allura nodded. The witch passed a clipboard for Allura to sign in. Keith eyed the tall vase of calla lilies by the desk, Halloween stickers on the black glass. The room was decked out in Halloween decorations; fake cobwebs with multicolor, plastic spiders draped the front of the round desk. Ghost cutouts were stuck to the walls, the little side tables by the leather couches and armchairs had orange bowls of candy. A life-size monster of Frankenstein, cute and green with a squiggly line for a mouth, was mounted to the door. Witches ironically loved Halloween.

They sat on the plush couch and waited only a few minutes before another witch with a clipboard came out from the side door to call them in. They were taken down a long stone hallway, lined with arching marble pillars and floating candles to illuminate the space. They were battery operated ones, Keith noted. Stacks of papers, files, and clipboards floated bodiless above their head to their destinations. The hall was lined with doors of all shapes and sizes. One opened up and a witch slipped out in a broad straw hat and jumpsuit, a tropical beach with the bluest water Keith has ever seen was spotted as the witch closed behind him. The water was almost as blue as Lance’s eyes. 

The witch with the clipboard lead them through a set of green double doors into an large, circular room. Despite being pretty far underground, the ceiling was a glass dome with a golden horizon illuminating the space. The room was lined from floor to the bottom of the glass dome with bookshelves heaped with books and labeled jars. A seating area with plush chairs and a circular, glass coffee table had a vase of peach roses. A large desk in the back of the room, scattered with books and pages and a steaming cauldron sat a man with bright orange hair and a matching mustache. 

He sprang to his feet upon their entrance. “Allura, my dear! It’s good to see you!”  They embraced firmly and he placed a hairy kiss on her cheek. Keith turned to thank the witch who lead them in, but he was gone already. 

“And you must be Keith Kogane, a pleasure to meet you.” Coran came over and vigorously shook Keith’s hand. He was. . .  certainly a character. Keith noted Coran’s spotlessly white suit with shiny, brown Oxfords. His shirt was a deep blue printed with pale blue flowers, buttoned to the collar with a white tie tucked into a light blue vest. A gold collar chain draped across his throat and matched the gold rings on his pinkies. Coran’s thick mustache lifted in the corners as he smiled broadly at Keith. “Allura told me everything that’s going on. You’re in luck, my specialty is healing magick. Did she give you a breakdown on what we’ll be doing?”

Nervously, Keith nodded. They were going to put him in a stasis, a spell that will drop on November first when- if- the ritual breaks this curse and frees both his and Shiro’s souls. The spell will lock onto Keith and force him into a stasis every night at exactly ten, and at eight the next morning it will release him. He’ll wake up refreshed, since he technically slept for ten hours, but his body will be frozen, suspended in time. It’s a timer that pauses every night to slow down the curses progress. Nothing will be able wake him up once he’s under.

He was worried about Lance when he’ll be out for ten hours, but most of all he’s worried about the  _ cost  _ of all this. He mentally counted his life savings, and wondered if he could take up a job at the local gas station to start saving up again. 

Coran reached over and scratched the Siamese balanced on Allura’s shoulders. “Hello, Randy. You’re looking a little chunky in the waist. Is Allura indulging you in a saucer of cream more often than she should?” The cat yowled in response, blue eyes glittered. “Delightful. Now, Keith if you don’t mind, would you go sit on the chaise over there? We’ll begin immediately.”

The ritual itself was a tedious one. It took three hours for them to work through every step. It ended in the early evening when Keith drank a glass full of a chilling brew from the steaming cauldron on Coran’s desk. It tasted like cough syrup and salt. 

A pale aura rose from his skin, and from his throat a drop of a deep, midnight blue spread like a drop of dye in water across the pale aura until it enveloped his body in a rich blue. It fizzed and dissipated. Keith took a deep breath, his skin felt like mint and head full of sloshing water.

“Before you go drop off every night, make sure you have at least one hour of sunlight on as much bare skin as you can get,” Coran explained. He had taken off his jacket and loosened his tie as they’d worked. “Sit out in the yard in the nude and sunbathe. Then take a Valerian root and dab it on your main arteries like it’s a good perfume. Your inner wrists and behind your ears will do. Then just do your usual bedtime routine, lay in bed and  _ boom  _ you’ll be out like a light. There’s a side effect of some minor floating and maybe a little bit of a glow to your skin. A good idea is to sleep with your hands on your belly, or else your arms and hands could fall asleep and you’ll be numb all day. If you suddenly start getting blue spots on your skin or your hair spontaneously combusts, come right back here and we’ll sort you out.”

Keith arched a brow at the last comment.

“Thank you so much, Coran. You’ve been a big help.” Allura leaned in and gave Coran a firm hug. He smiled and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. 

“Anything for my wonderful niece and her friends,” he laughed. Keith bristled. Allura considered him a friend now? He felt. . . flattered? Warm, definitely warm. A pleasant, honey gold feeling bubbled in his chest. 

They left the Witches Coven of the West shortly after to grab dinner in town, a little bay county that was a little barren due to it being the off season for tourists. They ate at a seafood place on the boardwalk, their table overlooked the blue sea and setting, pink sun. He only got a clam chowder in a bread bowl, everything else was both too expensive and too complex for him to eat. He was to the point most foods made him nauseous. 

Coran took them back to his place in his little orange 1990 Volkswagen Bug. They were to stay the night to ensure the spell assimilated okay with Keith before he could go home. His home was nice,  _ really  _ nice. It sat atop a hill overlooking the bay, where a long driveway lead up to the elegant home; a Mediterranean style villa that dripped money all down the hill. Coran pulled into a garage and lead them out to the front door. The front foyer was spacious, a decorated rug depicting a scene of people gathered in nature hung on the wall. Around the corner was the grand entryway, where a winding staircase with wrought iron rails curved elegantly up to the second floor. There were pedestals with old-looking vases, and a romantic-style painting in a gilded, gold frame on the wall.

Keith was given the grand tour of the home, a five bedroom estate that Keith counted at least four chandeliers of varying sizes and styles throughout the whole space. It was open and airy, a touch of modern with the smooth greys and whites but splashed with delicate marble and soft blues and cool colors. 

The room he was given had a window that filled the entire wall with glass double doors that lead out onto the balcony with a view of the lush golf course and a strip of the blue ocean in the distance. His room had a fireplace with an intricate iron grate, and a door that lead to a share bathroom with another guest room. It was probably the nicest shower Keith has ever seen, inlaid with grey stones and a shower head on the ceiling. He didn’t plan on taking a shower, but he had to with a nice one like this.

He FaceTimed Lance and gave the rundown what happened today and a tour later that night, just as the sun sunk into twilight. Lance was jealous of his shower. Coran overheard him in the kitchen bragging to Lance about his cool it.

“Mine’s even better. Wanna see it?” Keith perked up and followed Coran upstairs to the master suit. It was a corner room with two French doors that lead out to the wraparound balcony, a chaise lounge chair, and a chandelier that dripped crystals down to the California king sized bed. Keith angled his camera toward the gilded and golden framed mirror by the door and shot Lance a wave through the video chat. Lance chuckled softly. On his camera, he could see Lance lounging back on the couch, head propped up by a pillow and a fluffy, white tail gently tapped his ear. His hair was mused, and eyes drooped sleepily. He was absolutely stunning. 

The shower in question was even bigger, with two shower heads, a window, and a white marble bench against the wall. 

“You may shower in here if you want, for the full, exquisite experience.” Coran winked. “I’ll leave a towel out for you. Do you have soap? I have some travel bottles I like taking from hotels.”

“You make so much money, why would you steal from hotels?” Keith asked.

“I paid for the room, therefore they’re mine. Besides, I love collecting little soaps. They’re cute.”

At nine-thirty, he brushed his teeth and rubbed the Valerian root on his skin as instructed. Allura and Coran was with him in his room, wands out in case something bad happened. He laid on his bed only a couple minutes before the clock would strike ten.

“If all goes well tonight,” Coran explained. “Then you should be fine every night. But I urge you not to sleep alone, if something  _ were  _ to happen, best be with another witch who could do something.”

“He has Lance, he’ll be fine,” Allura said, a sly smirk on her lips. They positioned themselves in the armchairs by the balcony doors, prepared to take shifts watching him,.

The clock hit ten, the little bells chimed in the large house. Immediately, Keith’s body felt incredibly heavy. A tidal wave of warmth, a soothing dizziness washed over him. Weights were tied on his limbs and pulled him down, down, down. His eyes slipped shut, and then nothing.

It was as if no time had passed. He blinked his eyes open, a little blurred, but the fog cleared up. He hasn’t felt this relaxed and refreshed in months. 

“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” Allura said. She leaned over his bed, looking a little ragged, but otherwise okay.

“‘Morning,” Keith greeted hoarsely.

“Coran’s making breakfast, then we’ll head out, alright?” She said.

“How was I last night?” Keith sat up, a little out of it with the sudden bright morning light filtering through the large windows.

“You floated a few inches off the bed, but that was it. No other side effects, but Coran’s gonna give you his number in case something does happen,” she explained. “Now get up, he’s making oatmeal and coffee.”

Keith nodded and sluggishly rolled out of bed. She left him alone with a  _ click _ of the door shutting. He peed, splashed water on his face, and brushed his teeth before he fully processed his reflection in the mirror. 

He has never looked so sickly. It’s been coming, settling into his bones like a mold that plagued him from the inside out. The bags under his eye looked more like he smeared charcoal under them, his skin so pasty he could have opened a carton of spoiled milk and seen the shape of his own face. His hands were always shaking nowadays, the shivers that wracked through his body tried to get out no matter how much he suppressed them.

He choked down breakfast, absolutely tasteless and more like cardboard than toast in his mouth, then packed their overnight bags. Coran saw them out, Randy in his arms as he gave the familiar one final head scratch. He was purring hard when he finally hopped onto Allura’s broom tucked himself between her arms. It was deja vu from yesterday morning, Coran waving enthusiastically as they climbed higher and higher into the sky. 

“There’s a week and a half left,” Allura spoke as they flew over the mountain range that divided the sea from the desert. Her voice drifted behind her to Keith. “Exactly eleven days.” She paused a moment. “Will you be ready?”

“Yes,” he said close to her ear. “I want to live again.” 

She nodded, the white bun on her head bobbed with the motion. 

They arrived a little after noon. The heat had climbed to almost an unbearable temperature. Ninety would have been nothing to him, but in his weakened state he felt like his skin was melting off. Allura hurried him inside his cabin, where Lance had a lunch of pasta salad and grapes. He kissed Keith in greeting, and Allura gave Lance a peck on the cheek. 

“I’m staying at a motel in town so I’m nearby for the last stretch of this,” Allura said. “I will be monitoring Keith, and starting the setup for Wednesday.”

“Will it work this time?” Lance asked lowly. 

Allura blinked, taken aback by the acid in his tone. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure it will work.” 

“What about that other one percent?” 

Allura worried her lower lip, smearing her pink lip gloss. “Then he’ll be dead right then and there. No matter what, this ritual will end his pain.” 

They ate lunch together and Allura left with barely a goodbye. They waved at her as she flew off on her broom, white hair uncoiled from its previous bun and swept through the air like angel wings. Keith and Lance stood arm in arm and waved goodbye. 

“I’m hot,” Keith spoke suddenly. “Let's go swimming.”

They filled the large, metal tub Keith had in the back with water from the hose. It was large enough to easily fit five adults standing in it. They relaxed under the heat of the sun in the cool water. Lance floated in his back until Cosmo jumped in and splashed around, demanding to be played with. Lance indulged him and wrestled with him in the water and played an elaborate game of tag. Keith reclined against the cooled wall of the tub and watched them play. 

He could live like this, he thought. Not with this damned curse that linked Shiro’s dead soul to his and sucked the magick and life from him, but this sweet, domestic life he’s been building with Lance. Even with that month gap where they couldn’t see each other, Keith’s heart had grown softer and more fond of the man with his familiar in a headlock. His lips were pulled back in an arching smile and eyes sparkled like the sun reflecting off the ocean surface on the brightest summer day. His farts smell rank, he had a tendency to worry too much about his face, drooled all over the pillow when he slept, and forgot to keep his voice at an indoor volume, but Keith wouldn’t have him any other way.

The devil himself half swam, half walked through the water to Keith’s side of the tub and slid down the wall until only the mouth up stuck out of the water. He was out of breath, hair plastered to his forehead. Keith took a second to push his bangs back. Lance looked good with his hair slicked back. They should go somewhere nice after all this is over, somewhere Lance can gel his hair back and wear that navy suit Keith caught a glimpse of in his closet back at the beach town. 

“How are you doing?” Lance asked. He leaned in and pecked a kiss to Keith’s shoulder. 

Keith hummed before he responded. “Alright. The stasis works really well, I haven’t slept like that in a really long time.”

“But you’re not really asleep,” Lance pointed out. “More like suspended in time.”

“I guess. I still feel like I slept really good.” Keith shrugged.

To prove Keith’s earlier point, an eruption of bubbles popped at the surface around Lance. Keith smacked his shoulder. 

“This was never a hot tub, and never will be.” Keith scrunched up his face, glad the water absorbed the smell.

“I can and I will.” To prove a point, he farted again. Keith twisted one of his nipples and Lance giggled and pushed him away. “I can’t help it! It was the asparagus from lunch!”

“Asparagus my ass, that last one was on purpose I  _ felt  _ you shift over to push it out.” Keith smacked his chest, his shoulders, his arms that tried to block his hand.

“Ew, what if I accidentally pooped in here?” Lance snickered. Keith gasped in disgusted and forced Lance’s head under water. They roughoused for a bit until Keith had to pull back, out of breath and wheezing. Lance let go of his grip on his hair and rubbed a soothing hand down his arm as a gesture of truce.

They leaned back and watched Cosmo paddle around the tub, tongue lolled out and fur slicked down to reveal just how small he is. Blue came wandering out of the house through the doggy door and hopped up onto the side of the tub next to Lance’s head with a soft  _ mrp. _ Lance chirped and scratched the least fluffy part of her forehead with the tips of his fingers.

“Is she okay with the water?” Keith asked. Blue shook her head out to get whatever water Lance left on her face and licked her chops.

“She likes it. She joins me in the bath sometimes.”

To prove a point, Blue hopped into the water. Lance caught her and held her up over the surface so she could gather her bearings before letting her go. She did a funky little paddle, her fur pooled out liked a cloud under the water. Keith laughed at the ridiculous sight of her tiny, tiny  head and overlarge body. 

When their toes and fingers turned pruny, and long after Blue and Cosmo had hauled themselves out of the tub and sat on the porch licking themselves dry, Keith and Lance finally got out and dried off. Dinner was spent out on the porch watching the sunset in the west and the moon rise from the east. It was bright, almost a full moon.

“What are you doing on the Hunter’s moon?” Keith asked after dinner. The sun was long gone, and the moon was steadily climbing the sky. It’s bright, pale light pushed away the last dredges of sunlight that soaked up the horizon, the last pale blues and brought a midnight sky of millions of stars. 

“We’re going to charge up our wands, our crystals, herbs. Basically everything we’re gonna cleanse and charge so we’re at peak performance come next Wednesday,” Lance said. His eyes were glued to the pale horizon. 

Next Wednesday. It put a stamp on Keith’s life, a permanent date that would finally put this to an end, regardless if Keith lived or not. Allura confirmed there’s a very slim chance that Keith will die, but the fear was still present. It spiked the oil in his blood, Shiro’s ghost pumping through his veins, with a sour note of fear. 

That night, Lance gave him a soft kiss before he was dragged under his stasis. 

Their days passed the same as before Keith was put under his stasis. They ran errands together and watched the wildlife do its job around them. Lance took them to the farmer’s market a couple times, and once to the town to visit the post office so Lance could mail a letter to his parents in Cuba; a keychain from the small town’s local railroad museum slipped into the envelope. 

It was Keith’s birthday on Tuesday, and he celebrated with Lance, Krolia, Adam, Allura, Kolivan, Thace, and a few other local witches. It was a small dinner Krolia and Lance made, and Allura brought a red velvet cake she picked up from a nearby bakery. Twenty-five red candles burned away, and Keith snuffed them out with a deep wish that everything will be okay on November first.

Keith’s condition got worse. Even after his ten hour coma every night, he took a three hour nap in the afternoon. His body was filled with lead, the cotton that crammed his brain was ladden with water and made him feel soggy. He could barely work up the energy to get out of bed now, content with staying until early afternoon then sluggishly rolled out onto the porch to laze around in the chair. His reaction time was slowing, the whole world seemed too fast, too loud, too bright. Lance bought thicker curtains for his windows, made him food, kept a hand on his back when he couldn’t keep the food down. He was so steady in Keith’s tilting world.

He promised, as they laid out on an old futon to stargaze on the night of the full moon (exactly a week before the big day), that he will take Lance on a trip to thank him for everything. 

“I’ve never gone up north. The furthest was to Coran’s, but that’s it,” Lance said. Keith’s head was tucked snugly against his chest, a wiry arm draped over his shoulder and ran a thumb in idle circles over his leather jacket. “I’ve never seen it snow.”

“It snows here sometimes,” Keith said. “But it hasn’t in a few years. I’ll take you up north, to the mountains in a little ski village and we can be those tourists.”

“I can’t stand the cold, I’ll need at least four shirts under a heavy snow jacket,” Lance said.

“We can cuddle by a fire, and I’ll warm you back up.” To contradict his statement, Keith shivered. He curled closer to Lance’s warmth. 

He couldn’t stay warm anymore, even with the desert heat. He dreamed of being warm again.

“Are you implying that you’re gonna nail me on the couch?” Lance asked. Keith couldn’t see his face, but he could hear the sly smile. 

“That’s exactly what I’m implying.”

Lance giggled. “Take me to the mountains in January, then.” 

“Why not December?”

“I’m flying home to Cuba for Christmas and New Years. Do you-“ Lance took a deep breath. “Do you want to come with me?”

Lance had talked a bit about his family. It was large, and scattered all over North America now. Lance was the only one who lived here, had a sister in New York, a brother in Hawaii, and another brother in Mexico. Cuba was where they went for every occasion; they saved up and flew home to reunite a few times a year. 

Keith hesitated. “I do.”

“But?”

“But what? Meeting the parents is nerve wracking. And-“ Keith took a deep inhale of Lance’s warmth, the sweet and salty scent he was so used to long gone now. “And I get to see where you grew up.”

Lance huffed a short laugh. “I guess it’s a fair trade, seeing as we visit your childhood home every few days and your mom feeds me her rad pies.”

Keith grinned and snuggled deeper into Lance’s side. They laid like that for a little while longer, the moon a brilliant beacon in the star soaked sky. Keith named constellations for Lance, the ones he learned from Shiro. His heart clenched at the mere thought of him. The sludge that ran through his veins seemed to freeze up when his name accidentally slipped from his lips. 

“Tell me about him,” Lance said softly. “If you want.”

Keith’s breath hitched. “He was basically a brother to me. He has. . . had a prosthetic arm from when a demon took a bite out of him. He was a celestial witch, read the stars and the planets, worshipped the moon, and always had his head tipped toward the night sky.” He took in a shuddering breath. “My dad died when I was eight, and mom had disappeared when I was a baby. I was twelve when Shiro took me under his wing and set the foundations for learning witchcraft. I always had an affinity with it, but I was a wild card and got into trouble with my sporadic use of magick. He gave me training wheels and pointed at the direction I needed to go.

“When I was seventeen, my mom came back into my life. She had disappeared on a mission to track down some important and incredibly powerful magick stuff and found that in her seclusion to search, she lost my dad and I.” Keith doesn’t know how this turned into a life story. Lance has only heard snippets, picked up little facts here and there, but never the whole thing. “She took me back, and I was so happy. I was mad at first, of course,  but she took me on a mission to South America for two years and we bonded. Shiro always had my back; when I was pissed when my mom returned, when I decided to move to New Mexico for a year and came back because I ran out of money, when I needed to visit Dad’s grave he’d drive me to the flower shop then to the cemetery. He was the first to know I’m gay and- and he would have loved you Lance.” Keith was choking up now, hot tears traced down his cold cheeks. “He was the kindest, smartest, sympathetic,  _ loving  _ man I’d ever know. He and Adam were going to get married in October, a fall ceremony up the mountain where the leaves changed color, and move downstate to a little house they found by a lake. They were going to be so  _ happy _ because that’s what they deserve, what  _ Shiro  _ deserves.”

Lance traced a cool thumb under his eyes and wiped away his tears.  Keith buried his face into Lance’s chest and let himself cry freely, something he hasn’t done since Adam had stumbled into his cabin at the beginning of the summer, shaking and crying and Shiro no where in sight.

It took Keith a while to settle his heart and stem the flow of tears. He hiccuped and rubbed his nose every so often, but his heart hurt like a knife digging deep into his arteries twisted in agony.

“It’s almost ten,” Lance murmured. “We need to get you back inside.”

“I wanna sleep out here tonight,” Keith muttered into Lance’s chest. A part of him hoped if he sat out under the full moon, it would cleanse him, too.

“At least let me get your Valerian root, and wash your face,” Lance huffed.

Keith groaned and sat up. Lance lead him back inside to the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth. It was warmer inside than out in the chilled, night air. When he came out, Lance handed him the root and Keith rubbed it on his neck and wrist as instructed. Outside, Lance had taken the old futon and piled the blankets and pillows from their bed (Keith’s bed, but he considered it theirs now) to make it a big, fluffy nest. They snuggled up in it, warm tucked under the thick quilts and the duvet. 

Lance wrapped his arms around Keith and pulled him close, placing a gentle kiss on his forehead. “It’s two minutes ‘till,” He said softly. Keith shivered from the warm breath that trailed down his cheek. Keith pulled Lance into a deep kiss. He savored the plush feel of his lips, the gentle warmth that caressed his skin. 

“I love you,” he whispered against Lance’s lips, right before the weights tied around his limbs dragged him down and the starry sky that backdropped the sharp silhouette of Lance’s cheeks and the rich blue were shrouded in darkness. 

He awoke to the sun beating down on his face, or really just a stream of sunlight spilling over his eyes. He blinked the remnants of his stasis out of his eyes and above him was his ceiling. 

“I said I wanted to sleep under the stars,” Keith grumbled. 

“You did, I brought you in at sunrise so you wouldn’t burn up like a crisp. Like a vampire.” Lance’s voice floated over from the kitchenette. The kettle next to him was whistling. “It was weird bringing you back inside. Like I was carrying you, but you were still floating in my arms.”

“How did last night go?” Keith asked. He rolled over to face Lance and watch him make breakfast sideways.

“It went fine. Allura finally has everything we need.” Lance pulled up a chair to the side of the bed and sat with a bowl of cereal. The usual extravagant breakfast was missing, but Keith saw the heavy bags under Lance’s eyes and didn’t say a word about it. “It was literally only three things, but I had gone to Morocco for one, Hunk went to  India, and she to Israel to get them.”

Keith jerked up. How much is that going to cost him in the end?!

“Calm down, she had connections and I have free flyer miles.” Lance pushed him gently back on the bed. “Her dad was pretty stinking rich so money’s not really an issue. We purified everything last night and set up the area.”

“What time did you get back?”

Lance took a moment to chew his cereal slowly before he swallowed and answered. “Like, three. I slept with you on the futon last night. Woke up at seven and dragged our asses back inside as the sun rose.”

“You’re doing so much for me,” Keith groaned. He pulled Lance’s pillow from next to him and yelled loudly into the ivory case. “I hate it! I hate relying on people like this. I’m in your’s and Allura’s debt forever!”

“Nah, we know you’d do the same for us. Don’t sweat it.”

Keith peeked out from his pillow. “What if you’d known this would take you four months to work on?”

Lance shrugged. “I got a boyfriend out of it.” Keith smacked Lance with his pillow. He squealed in protest, lifting a defensive arm to shield his cereal. 

“But really? Like you didn’t know you would be getting a boyfriend out of it?” Keith asked firmly.

“I’d still do it. I mean, it’s mostly Allura who’s doing all the work, but. . .” Lance trailed off. “She’s still young. She is the greatest witch on the coast, probably the whole country, but she’s only twenty-seven. Physically, she’s more than capable, but she has a lot to learn still. I know I do.” He reached over and ran his hand through Keith’s hair. The feel of his deft fingers running across his scalp eased Keith deeper into his duvet. His eyelids were still heavy, begged him to sleep again. He let the fog settle over his mind.

“Are you going back to sleep?” Lance asked softly.

“Yeah. ‘M really tired,” Keith could barely find the strength to speak. Lance lifted his hand from his hair. Keith weakly protested

“Okay, but I’m going to wake you up before lunch. You need to rest, but don’t sleep the day away.”

Keith could barely hum a response before he drifted back to sleep.

He spent the last six days like this. He slept like a cat, sporadically and constantly. He’d awaken after his stasis, then fall back to sleep until noon. He would eat, then crawl back into bed and sleep some more. 

Lance was worried, he could tell. He let Keith sleep, yet he didn’t want Keith to sleep the rest of his life away. Lance didn’t say it, but when Lance frantically woke him up from his daytime nap, pupils mer pinpoints in the sea of blue, Keith knew Lance was scared he would die on him. By October 30th, he couldn’t eat a bite of food anymore. The nightmares were there every sleeping moment, and followed him into reality. 

He started hallucinating. He didn’t know it was at first, until Lance asked what he was staring at and Keith told him the little glowing lights behind him. Lance’s furrow in his brow was concerned and scared. 

His memory was giving out on him. His limbs wouldn’t cooperate. Lance didn’t leave his side for a second. 

The morning of Halloween, Keith didn’t wake up from his stasis. Lance shook him awake at noon for food, to try and get something in him. He realized then that as soon as his body emerged from the stasis it went straight to sleep. 

He sluggishly forced himself out of bed, determined to make the last day matter. They ate lunch outside on the front porch, the air temperament and a little bit cloudy. It was like any other day, but the air felt charged. Even with Keith’s stunted senses and eroding body, he could feel how thin the veil was. 

Usually, every Samhain, Keith and Shiro would celebrate. The local coven threw an elaborate event where they had a huge feast, a bonfire, and plenty of dancing and laughter. Keith generally hated parties, but Samhain was somewhat an exception. It greeted the darker half of the year, and with the thinned veil between the living and the dead, it was the one night in the year where divination magic was strongest and welcomed the benevolent spirits of the dead for their insight. They wore costumes, since it was Halloween for the rest of the world, but ensured their faces were covered to protect them from bad spirits. Krolia specialized in divination, and was the only one in the county who could do it right. She set up shop at the party, and was the go-to for fortune tellings about anything and everything. 

He was going to miss the party tonight. A part of him didn’t mind, but the other half of him did. He only wanted to go if Shiro was with him. Not like this, not pumping through his veins like a poison. 

Krolia wasn’t going tonight. She needed to be at the ritual. Lance will be there, too, and Adam. Allura will act as the priestess and lead the ritual.

Lance tilted his head, closed his eyes to a sound Keith couldn’t hear behind the unbearable ringing.

“Do you hear them?” Keith asked. 

Lance nodded. “It’s like a breeze right now, but they’ve been getting louder as the day goes on. Tonight, we’ll be able to hear exactly what they’re saying.”

Keith hoped he would hear them. The whispers of the dead that would float through the air on All Hallows’ Eve would try and use witches as medians to link back to the land of the living. Tonight, in cemeteries and fires, the spirits will celebrate with the humans. He hoped he could come home tonight and see it.

“Are you scared?” Lance reached out and took Keith’s hand, fingers warm against his quivering, cold ones. 

“Yes. You?” 

“Yes.” Lance pulled Keith’s hand up and placed delicate kisses along his pale knuckles. Keith admired the plush lips grazing his skin. “I’m praying to every deity that this will end up okay.”

“I miss my magick,” Keith sighed. “I miss being able to feel the world, that crackling feeling on your skin when the magick is just right?” Lance nodded.

“Tomorrow,” he said. He reached over and pulled Keith’s shaking arm back down to his blanketed lap. He felt like an old person, bound to the porch chair with a blanket over his legs to stave off the cold, his body withering away. “You can use your wand again. Show me some cool spells, yeah?”

Keith chewed his lip and nodded. “I have a cool spell to summon stink bugs I wanna show you.”

Lance wrinkled his nose. “Can’t you show me something cooler?” He jolted and looked over at the sky, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Gotta double check, I’m not that good at telling the time based off the sun alone, but it looks like it’s time to start getting ready.”

The light atmosphere they had struggled to pull up dropped back down. Keith grunted as he hoisted himself up from his chair. Lance gave him a hand. 

Lance drew a bath for Keith, filled to the brim with herbs and the faint glow that the tip of Lance’s wand had dropped in there. He stayed in the milky water longer than he needed to, eyes following the little white flowers and lavender buds over the surface. 

At six they headed out to the tree. Keith didn’t need to be naked, thankfully. Everyone here had seen him naked at one point in his life (his mother saw his baby butt, and Adam saw him run out of the shower ass naked during an earthquake). 

There was no circle drawn into the dirt, but they stood around a scorch mark burned deep into the bleached earth. Keith shuddered, Adam’s recount of how Shiro died in this very spot sent a prickling chill up his spine. He hasn’t come to this spot all summer.

Allura stood at the front. Each of the people here were important to Keith and Shiro in some way, and each will stand in a cardinal direction to act as a guard from any spirit that was attracted to the ceremony’s magick and as a pillar. 

Unlike the first ritual, where they were falling apart at the seams and frantically trying to stop everything slipping from their hands by hopelessly cupping a hand under the running stream of water, there was a new energy. They worked more like a well oiled machine. There were no props to use this time, no mat of candles and stones and oils, no charmed driftwood or herbs. Each person held a candle and stood in each of the cardinal directions, and Allura had a jar of sea salt at her hip. 

Lance took the northern point, his blue eyes paled in the warm light of the candle. The toes of his sneakers were spotted under the hem of his navy cloak. To the west was Adam, his face betraying no emotion. His mother stood across from Lance at the southern point, her hood pulled down over her eyes. Allura stood at the eastern corner, her white hair shimmering from the candle held to her chest. Keith took the middle of the ashen circle facing Lance, his hands shook with nerves and exhaustion. He let his thumb play with the silver ring on his pinky and the sea-spun bracelet on his wrist.

The jar of salt was passed around and flickered toward Keith from each of the cardinal directions. His skin hissed, the oil in him recoiled from the purified grains. These were stronger than usual, so strong it left the bare skin sizzling where it touched him. He sucked in a sharp breath and glanced down to see it had left burnt, red marks on his bare belly. 

Allura started murmering in Latin, an evocation Keith knew would identify Shiro. He felt the slime in his body stir, as if shaken awake from a deep sleep. 

Simultaneously, Lance, Allura, Adam, and Krolia knelt and lit the ring in front of them on fire with the flame of their candles. A ring of oil Allura and Lance had blended specifically for this ritual caught on fire and roared to life around him. They were now separated by a waist high flame, a deep blue core with golden embers. Keith could barely make out Lance’s face in front of him. They took a step back, deeper into the darkness to where Keith could only make out a vague silhouette of them. 

The fire had a pretty wide radius, but he could still feel the intense heat of the flames. It steadily rose higher, the flames licked the inky sky with it’s bleeding red as Allura started to speak again. Her voice was magnified by her specialty magick- her voice and her aura was where she drew her power, a rare yet incredibly powerful practice of magick. The Latin words, of her objectifying Shiro to draw him out, mold him into a physical form for them to pull from Keith’s body, drew a painful gurgling from the depths of his stomach. 

It started slow, a simmering heat as if someone cranked up the pot of water from low to high heat burned within his core. Like the first ritual, his blood began to boil, his skin was melting off his bones and his bones, oh God his bones, they were white hot and made of needles razor sharp and pierced his sinews and muscles. He bit back a groan and shuddered, doing everything to keep himself upright. 

Allura’s voice swelled in power, the sound of the garbled words amplified. A low hiss tore through his lungs, a bear gripped his skull. No one could see him fall to his knees with a pained yelp. 

The skin of his back rippled and tore, or at least felt like it. He cried out in pain, unable to hold it in any longer. A muffled cry of his name sounded like it came from beyond the crashing waves of moonstone beach. He fell to his back on the hard dirt and screamed out.

He could feel his blood evaporating, escaping his pores and floating into a black fog above him. He couldn’t stop hyperventilating, couldn’t stop the flow of tears, the choked gasps. It all hurt so  _ much.  _ He quivered like a dying leaf, and only figured that metaphor worked for this because he actually felt as if he was dying. His skin felt burning ice cold, and his insides were molten hot, hotter than the indigo core of the flames around him.

Then it stopped. A shifting cloud lifted from his skin. The miasma, he wondered. It got deeper, darker. Solidified into the shape of a man.

Shiro stood over him, his form black and clouded from the haze of smoke. He looked like the day he had left to pick cactus needles, in his work boots and loose t-shirt under his army jacket. 

His eyes glowed an unnatural yellow. 

“He’s not Shiro!” Allura’s voice broke through the roar of the sea in his ears and the climbing flames. They never strayed outside their perfect lines, but rose higher into the pitch black sky that Shiro loved to trace the shape of every night. “He’s been drenched in miasma! We need to purify him!”

Shiro growled. Actually  _ growled  _ at Keith!

“Shiro.” Keith crawled backward toward the edge of the fire and away from Shiro. “Shiro, it’s me, Keith.”

Shiro took a step forward. His lips pulled back in a snarl, his face twisted into something gross and utterly inhuman. “You’re too weak, Keith.” His voice, oh his  _ voice.  _ Keith’s only heard it in desperate dreams and nightmares that plagued his mind whenever he closed his eyes. A mer memory stood before him, an image of what he once was. This was the ghost of Keith’s brother. “You were never strong enough to contain me for long.”

Keith was speechless. Shiro looked exactly as he remembered him from that afternoon. The glint of metal from his right hand had dirt clogged in the crevices of his fingers, dents strewn across the silver surface of the prosthetic. His amethyst earrings, the jangle of charms, crystals, and feathers he had clipped to the butt of his athame dangling from his hip, the pale scar that cut across the bridge of his nose. From the top of his black hair with a bleached white forelock, down to his black boots that were faded to a brown from the pale, desert sand and sun exposure.

He looked the same, and yet the sinister grin and glowing yellow eyes told him this wasn’t Shiro anymore. Keith gulped.

“Shiro,” Keith couldn’t bring his voice above a whisper. “Shiro, please.”

“It’ll all be over soon, Keith,” Shiro said. Then he striked.

Shiro lunged for Keith’s throat, the firelight turning the silver of his arm a muted gold. Keith rolled out of the way and stumbled back to put some distance between them. 

Allura had explained how his soul is tainted, that all Keith could do is convince him to leave. The ritual fire burned away the ropes that bonded Shiro to him, but he was drenched in the darkest miasma and would be unwilling to part from Keith until his job is done. He was trained by the Black Magick to kill Keith no matter what. 

“Shiro,” Keith tried again. “Let’s go home, let’s go back to Adam and mom, Cosmo and Black is waiting for us. They’re waiting for you.” They’re waiting for his soul to pass on. With Adam’s necromancy magick, Keith could see why he’d suffered for so long. He could see Shiro’s soul suffering on the day after Keith returned and he’d stepped into his house, saw how the curse locked his magick and Shiro to his blood. 

“No.” Shiro striked. His prosthetic came down hard and fast at Keith’s head, a killing blow. He barely moved out of the way, but got nicked in the shoulder. A pain tore through him, down to his elbow and across his chest. For being a shadow of his former self, Shiro hit pretty hard.

Keith tried not to attack. He didn’t have the strength, the will to land a blow on Shiro. He dodged and rolled out of the way, leading Shiro around the circle of fire that caged them in. Keith could hear his name being called. 

“ _ Keith!”  _ Lance’s voice echoed over the roar of the fire, the crashing waves in his ears. God, Shiro was gone. This was an after image, a mirage of the man he loves. He can’t let it kick him around. His current life, the budding one with Lance that was so tender and new, was standing there waiting for him to kick death’s ass. 

He heaved and launched himself at Shiro, his fist colliding with his jaw. They scrabbled for a second, rolling across the ground with sharp punches. Keith got Shiro pinned under him, chest heaving and his wrists caught in Keith’s shaking hands. Shiro grinned a malicious smile that froze Keith’s core. “That’s the Keith I know.”

The fights in the school yard, the witches he’d needlessly lash out at, the years of emptiness without his parents, without Shiro. His grasp weakened and Shiro broke free. He pushed Keith to the ground in his moment of weakness, caught up in the bitterness of Shiro’s words that cut into a wound that had long since healed, yet not long enough since it was still so tender. 

“You’ve always been quick to fight, quick to hurt others. You’re still a kid, Keith,” Shiro snarled through his teeth. His gold eyes pulsed in the firelight. 

Keith got too close to the fire. His hair was singed, and that gave Shiro an idea. He stuck his whole prosthetic into the open flame, burned away his favorite jacket until the blue flames licked his metal arm white-hot. The sizzle of the intimidating, glowing metal when it hit the cool, desert air sent a chill of far down Keith’s spine. Shiro launched himself at him and Keith could barely block the blow. 

He stole Shiro’s athame, a knife used solely for ritual purposes and would have living Shiro disappointed in him, and blocked the white hot arm before the burning hand could grab his face. He was pinned to the ground, his human hand as his throat and the searing hot one hovering dangerously over his cheek. He turned away with a cry, and felt the too close fingertips leave a fresh burn on his cheek. 

“Sh-Shiro! You’re my brother, I can’t leave you like this. I love you!” He sobbed out. It hurt, hurt so much. Tears from the heat and tears from the pain fogged over his eyes and dripped down his temple into his matted hairline. 

“Keith.” Shiro winced at the proclamation. His grasp weakened enough for Keith to get his feet under Shiro’s midsection and pushed him away. 

For a burning hot second, he swore he felt his magick pulse through him again. A burning, magma that flushed through his veins with a warmth he hasn’t felt in  _ months.  _ He took advantage of that blazing second and knocked Shiro down with a few hard punches and stabbed the athame through his prosthetic arm, pinning him to the dirt by the palm of his hand. The feathers were scorched away from the sizzling heat of the metal. Shiro cried out, in pain or defeat, Keith didn’t know.

“Let’s go home, Shiro,” Keith breathed out, falling to his knees next to him. The burn that licked his blood, burned away the remaining slick oil that permeated through his bones and tissue, dissipated and left him feeling stronger than he has in months. “I’m not giving up on you, ever.”

Shiro let out a choked cry and for a brief moment, Keith swore he saw steel grey eyes streaming with tears before Shiro erupted into a black smoke. The fire sucked up the ashes.

He stood there panting for a moment, the circle of fire dissolved around him into the night sky. He felt hot sweat cooling on his hairline, hot tears freezing on his cheeks. The athame, a black blade soaked in grey soot, was all that remained of Shiro.

They rushed at Keith. Krolia reached him first, falling to the ground to embrace her son. Lance wrapped his long arms around them both and pulled them in close with a loud sob.

“Allura, do it quick,” Adam choked out over the cries of celebration and relief. “ _ Please!” _

The group hug pulled back to see Allura and Adam make a dash for the athame. She pulled the third and final item from her pocket: a moonstone. 

They fell to their knees and gripped the athame and moonstone between them, eyes screwed shut and murmured in Latin.

“What are you guys doing?” Lance asked. He loosened his hold on Keith to pull himself closer to them.

Keith’s eyes widened when he realized what was happening. “Lance, get back. We need to get back.” The three of them scrambled back just as the temperature dropped. The still air shifted, a wind full of sparks whipped past them to where Adam’s and Allura’s hands were joined. The wind swirled around them, howled with voices Keith knew were the dead lingering around. He can hear them finally. 

Their hair and cloaks lifted from the voice of the wind and whipped around them. The little moonstone, barely the size of a quarter and glinted with the blue hue, rattled between their palms and glowed brightly. The athame was vibrating in their joined hands. Their chanting grew louder, the wind picked up.

Suddenly, at the peak of the wind and the electric buzzing that danced across their skin and the dry ground, Adam and Allura released their hands and dropped the moonstone to the dirt. It shivered and sparked like a ground flower firework. Adam and Allura quickly stepped back, the athame still clutched firmly in Adam’s shaking hand. 

The moonstone lurched and skidded across the ground, the sparks growing larger and hotter, until it parked itself in the middle of the ashy circle of Shiro’s grave and shook. Hesitantly, they inched closer to see what it was doing.

Sparks and rays of light emanated from the little moonstones core, growing larger and larger. It molded a shape on the ground, the light knitted together and made arms, legs, a torso, a head. Flecks of light rose slowly to the sky, as if it was ash that was too light to stay on the ground. It was over quickly when the sparks calmed down, the little beams of light dimmed.

On the ground laid Shiro. His hair stark white and glimmered under the half moon. He wore the same clothes from the day he died, his arm thankfully still intact and favorite jacket not missing a sleeve. Keith rushed to his side, a cry of “ _ Shiro!”  _ on his cracked lips.

He pulled his head up into his lap and caressed his face, tears spilled down his cheeks and dripped onto Shiro’s scar. He groaned in his arms. The group circled around him, knelt by his side and watched him sigh and and roll his neck into consciousness. 

“Takashi? Baby?” Adam said, a deep crack in his voice. Keith chanced a glance and saw Adam had taken Shiro’s good hand and brought the knuckles to his lips. “Is this really you?”

“What happened?” Lance whispered. He knelt by Shiro’s legs with Allura, eyes wide and face ashen.

“He didn’t truly die,” Allura explained. She hiccuped and wiped a stray tear away. “His body was eradicated by Black Magick and his soul was bonded to a curse before it could pass. He was here, just not without a proper host. We caught him before he could drift away and wove him a new body out of the moonstone. It’s made of light, held together with White Magick. Adam told me about this ritual, and we prepared for it and decided to give it a shot as soon as Keith was free.”

Shiro took in a deep, shuddering breath in Keith’s lap and all eyes were back on him, voices hushed. “Shiro?” Keith said softly, afraid Shiro will dissolve in his hands if he spoke too loud.

Shiro opened his eyes, the cool grey unfocused. It took him a moment to blink the fog from his vision and process Keith’s face.

“Keith, wha-? What happened? Why do I. . .? What happened to your face?” Shiro zeroes in on the fresh burn that throbbed on Keith’s cheek. 

“Don’t worry about it, you’re okay.”

“Adam? Krolia? Who-?” Shiro tried sitting up, but Keith forced him back down.

“I’m here, baby, I’m right here.” Adam scooted closer and pressed his forehead into Shiro’s. A stray tear plopped on Shiro’s brow. Shiro reached up and tentatively cupped Adam’s face, wiped away a tear with his quivering thumb.

“It will take some getting used too,” Allura started to explain. “You’re body is a lot lighter-” Lance snickered at the unintentional pun, Allura punched his arm, ”- but we have some spellwork we can do in the coven to help solidify your form so you won’t dissolve. After a while your body will be almost, if not just as, solid as a regular human body.”

“Did you do this?” Shiro asked. He forced himself up, waving off Keith’s fluttering hands and Adam’s worrying fists. “I-I don’t remember what happened in there. But I know I died, I basically died. You brought me back?”

Allura shrugged. “It was Adam’s idea. And I couldn’t have done it without the help of some excellent witches.” She waved a hand at Lance, who sat awkwardly by Shiro’s feet and waved shyly. 

Shiro softened. “Thank you, thank you so much for what you guys did. There is nothing I could ever do to repay you in full, but let me do my best.”

“Invite me to the wedding, that’s really it,” Allura said. Shiro laughed, loud and full. Keith missed that sound. 

Keith, Adam, and Krolia scooted closer and leaned down to talk softly with Shiro. He was still weak, too weak to keep himself sitting up for a while.

Spirits higher than they’ve been all summer, the small party stumbled to Krolia’s house to eat and recuperate. Shiro was sent to lay on Krolia’s bed, Adam and Allura hovering over him to ensure he was okay. Krolia was whipping up a soup (reheating the one from the market deli really, she unfortunately can only bake desserts and grilled cheese sandwiches).

Lance sat Keith down in the living room with a satchel of medical supplies. He popped open a vial of a milky white liquid and doused a cotton ball with it and gently dabbed the burn on his cheek. Keith flinched from the sting. 

“Are you okay?” Lance asked softly. 

Keith thought for a second before he answered. “Yes and no? Yes, because I can feel my magick seeping back into me, Shiro’s back, and we’re all alive. No, because. . . I’m still worried about Shiro.”

Lance nodded. “His body isn’t stable. Allura is doing what she can to stabilize him, but he’s gonna have to be carted to the coven for all the intensive stuff.” He paused his ministrations and gulp. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. The moonstone she had me hunt down had to be specific, and usually with ceremonies it’s just whatever crystal you feel drawn to. She tapered with it, I saw her douse it in some Holy water stuff and soak it in an herbal bath for. . .  I think an hour for every day Shiro was gone? It was intense.”

“Do you think she feels bad?” Keith asked.

“Yeah. She does. She feels like she failed you, that’s why she worked that extra step in to go above and beyond to make sure you get that happy ending you deserve.” Lance went back to cleaning the burn and dabbed a foul smelling ointment to it. Keith wrinkled his nose at the odor. “Sorry, trying to make sure it heals over fast. This is like, a second degree burn, so the mark should fade away after a few years. But like, I got a second degree burn on my ankle when I was eleven and sometimes when the shower is really hot and I pull at the skin I can still see a little bit of the mark.”

Keith smiled, but flinched when it pulled at the open wound. Lance shushed him and kissed his okay cheek. “Look on the brightside, once you’re all rested up you can finally wow me with your sick desert magick.”

Keith made a crooked half smirk to make sure he didn’t pull on the burned cheek. “I can do fire magick too, don’t forget that. I have a whole show for you.”

Lance giggled and Keith fell in love a little bit more. “Is it as cool as my water magick?” His eyes flickered down to the bracelet at Keith’s wrist. 

“It’s way cooler.”

Lance gasped and lightly smacked his arm. Keith pushed his scoffing face away with a short laugh. The moonstone ring glinted on his pinky.

“You’re ring!” He reached to tug it off, but Lance’s tan fingers stopped him.

“Keep it safe for me. I figured you liked wearing it anyway.” Lance winked. 

Keith huffed, but didn’t bother to hide his smile. “I do, I really do.” It felt right, like the water spun bracelet wrapped around his wrist and Lance’s hand in his. He squeezed Lance’s warm hand in his own and took a quick glance at Lance’s soft lips.

Lance bit his lip, but still leaned in to give Keith a soft kiss. It was sweet, tender, and full of something Keith didn’t think he could live without anymore. They stayed like that for seconds, minutes, hours. Keith didn’t care, as long as Lance’s lips didn’t leave his except to whisper lovely words against his skin and kiss the rest of him. 

A tuft of white hair caught Keith’s peripheral. He pulled back and turned to see Shiro standing at the mouth of the hallway supported by Allura and Adam. A wicked smirk graced his face.

“What are you doing up?” Keith said, his voice a little airy from the kiss. 

“Gotta pee real bad. Saw something interesting on my way out of the bathroom.” Shiro waggled his silvery brows and darted his eyes between Lance and Keith. “You’d think being dead I wouldn’t have a full bladder, but I drank a lot of something in the afterlife.”

“Got something to say, spit it out, old man,” Keith growled out.

Shiro choked, Adam barked out a laugh. There was a warm flush to his face Keith hasn’t seen since the day he and Shiro went to gather cactus needles. Krolia called for them to come get our soup and grilled cheese, and Allura bit back a smile at the aghast look on Lance’s face.

That moment, settled around Shiro tucked in bed with a sandwich sitting on his laughing mouth and Adam curled up next to him. Krolia sat at the foot of the bed with her soup teetering dangerously on her knee, Allura at the foot of the bed drawing sigils in the air with her wand, a furrow in her brows but a smirk on her lips (the sandwich thing was her fault). Keith and Lance curled up in the window seat, back pressed against the cool glass. Keith linked their fingers together and drew Lance’s knuckles in to kiss them individually. The bandage on his cheek felt stiff, his limbs ached, he was exhausted and ready to sleep, and a new humming warmth replaced the sickly cold oil that had spilled in his blood a few months ago.

He was happy, he was recovering, and with Lance by his side and December no longer a due date, he felt he could begin this new chapter. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> main tumblr: canadiangothstalker  
> art tumblr: mirai-eats  
> twitter: mirai_eats


	4. The Mountainside Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank youu everyone for all your support! I go back and read then reread comments all the time and they always make me so happy and motivated its YOU who are the all stars here <3  
> This part wasn't planned originally, but as I got closer to the end I realized I needed a better closure than what I had set up originally. Also? im a sucker for weddings

Keith’s feet already ached in his shoes and the ceremony had barely begun. In his own defense, he had been running around all morning getting everything ready. The flower girl went missing, and Keith found her and another little girl playing hide and seek down the hill. The boutonnieres were late to arrive and Keith had to personally track down the flower shop to pick them up. Shiro locked himself in his suite this morning and took Keith to calm him down and put on his damn suit already. 

Now it was time. Keith nervously picked at the skin around his nails as he stood erect next to Shiro. The day was beautiful, the sky a watery blue and chilled from the mid November air. The trees around them were golden, the air crisp and cool and smelled faintly of apples from the orchard that stood nearby. The white archway that climbed over Shiro’s and Adam’s heads was strung with fairy lights, and more were string criss-cross over the onlookers. Next to Adam was his cousin, and between them was Coran, who’s bright orange hair matched the warm scenery. It was a small wedding, not even fifty people filled the chairs. 

He spotted Lance in a chair in the front row,  lower lip caught between his teeth and eyes already wet. They haven’t even said their vows yet and he’s already trying to hold back tears. Allura and his mother sat on either side of him, and Hunk sat behind Lance with a handkerchief to dab the tears from his eyes. A beautiful lady taller than Hunk and glittering, gold earrings had a hand on his arm. Next to Allura sat a blonde woman with her hair tied into a tight bun atop her head, pearl pink dress complimented Allura’s baby blue nicely. Her girlfriend, Keith realized, who he’s only ever heard about. 

Coran droned on, dropping silly jokes into the official business to pull a laugh from the audience. It worked, of course, but Lance was still crying. He couldn’t see Shiro’s face from where he was standing to see his expression, but he could see that behind his glasses, Adam’s face was warmed with a flush and his eyes sparkled unnaturally so. Keith’s own chest felt tight, his throat threatened to close up on him. It was finally here, after that awful summer where Shiro was dead and Keith was near dead, is a year and two weeks behind them now. They deserved this more than anyone else he knew.

Keith’s eyes drifted over to where Lance sat a few feet away from him, long legs crossed at the knees and adored in that navy suit Keith loved him in. His hair was gelled back nicely, his tie a black velvet and a silver collar chain. His hands were clasped over his knees, a black ring on his thumb was a gift from Keith on their one year anniversary (he underestimated how slim Lance’s fingers were, but he refused to let Keith exchange it for a smaller size). He was absolutely stunning. 

Lance caught Keith staring and winked, eyelashes clumped from his tears. Hunk tapped his shoulder and passed him a Kleenex package.

Adam and Shiro had chosen to stick to a standard wedding with only a few witch traditions thrown in the mix. They exchanged rings, then had their hands tied together by a maroon ribbon and blessed by the elements: a candle burned under their joined hands and sprinkled with salt water. Sealed with a kiss and a swell of cheers finished off the ceremony. 

They stuck around to take wedding pictures with family and friends while the rest of the audience was directed down a short path to a clearing where the reception is held, tables draped in deep maroon and seasonal flowers awaited with a canopy of fairy lights strewn over their heads. 

Keith stood beside the photographer as she snapped a gorgeous picture of Adam and Shiro, a veil of white chiffon draped over their heads and the midday sun glimmered behind them, throwing them in a golden haze as they stared lovingly at each other. 

“Keith! Come over here and get some pictures with Lance.” Shiro came over when they finished the last set of pictures and pulled him toward the arch of trees that framed a cliff overlooking the valley below. Adam had stepped aside, the chiffon draped over his arm. 

“What, no it’s fine. I’m not good in pictures,” Keith protested.

“I don’t care, go stand with your man and look cute.” Shiro shoved over there.

Lance saddled up next to Keith, tears wiped away and looked as fresh as ever. Keith’s chest felt tight and warm.

“Hey, hotshot.” Lance leaned over and kissed his cheek, wrapping his arm around Keith’s waist. 

“Hey,” he said. He turned and kissed the side of Lance’s jaw. A  _ click  _ of a camera shutter broke the still mountain air. He glared at the photographer, and she merely shrugged with a slick smile. Shiro shot him a thumbs up from behind the photographer’s assistant holding up a large reflector disk.

A few irritating pictures later, he slipped a tip to the photographer and asked her to personally email him those ones. 

Keith found Lance by the little nightstand that sat under a tree with a chalkboard announcing the couples names and a mason jar filled with yellow and orange paper leaves with guests well wishes scribbled on them. Lance was hunched over with the pen drawing a bad picture of himself. 

“Do you really need to do that?” Keith asked. Lance jumped, having not heard Keith come up behind him.

“I already wrote a note,” Lance huffed. “Now I’m drawing them stuff. I’ll probably use whatever paper no one else uses to draw them more stuff.”

Keith ran a hand down Lance’s hunched over back and tugged the hem of his coat. “Come on, they’re gonna start the toasts and I wanna be in my seat before I gotta stand and make a fool of myself.”

“You are not gonna make a fool of yourself, dude.” Lance looped his arm through Keith’s and lead them back toward the tables where everyone was mingling, drinks already being served. Lance sat down in his assigned seat next to Keith’s, keeping their arms looped. “You practiced a lot and I already told you, it sounds great. If  Shiro doesn’t cry, I’ll punch him in the nuts until he does.”

Keith elbowed a laugh from Lance’s side. “Don’t, he needs that.”

Lance heaved out a laugh and smacked Keith’s arm. 

Unfortunately, Lance was right. Keith was shaking the whole time, the champagne in his flute rippled in his clammy hands as he read off the wrinkled notebook paper. His whole body shook with nerves, but he managed to (mostly) keep the quivering from his voice.

“Shiro,” he concluded his speech. “You’re like a brother to me, you raised me to be the man I am today. You deserve to be happy, you deserve to have Adam, and he deserves you. Today is the day Adam is officially a part of our family. I love you both, and can’t wait to have Lisa’s pumpkin crunch dessert for Thanksgiving every year now.”

The applause broke out, but a loud sniffle drew his watery eyes three seats over where Shiro sat, tears running down his face and Adam dabbing away at them with a napkin. He didn’t feel very composed either. Lance wrapped and arm around his shoulder once he sat down and gave him a soft kiss on the side of his head. He melted into his arm. 

“Guess I don’t need to punch his nuts for you,” Lance said close to his ear, warm breath fanned across Keith’s clammy skin. He snorted a laugh, 

It was a cocktail sort of party with finger foods and refreshments, no assigned seatings so everyone could mingle around. He accidentally kneed the table when him and Lance were playing footsies. 

Adam and Shiro’s first dance, under the sky now melting into a rich gold, was to Queen’s “Love of My Life”. The dance floor was cleared and they held each other and shuffled awkwardly across the hardwood floor that was placed out in the middle of the grass. Neither of them knew how to dance.

Keith sat firmly at his table picking at the flower arrangement in front of them. Lance was recording the dance on his phone with a sappy grin on his face. Out of nowhere, he switched off the video and leaned over to blew out the candle in front of them. Keith narrowed his eyes and snapped his fingers, a little light of flame danced above the tip of his finger, his blood hummed with the familiar buzz of magick. He relit the candle, only for Lance to blow it out again. 

They did this several times until Allura pulled the candle away from them with a frown. 

“Do it again,” Lance whispered. Keith nodded and snapped his fingers, Lance blew out the little light.

He did this a lot now, doing little things that would make Keith use his magick. Ever since he was cleared just after Christmas to use his magick again, Lance would take out candles and ask Keith to light them, just to blow them out when Keith’s back was turned and ask him to relight it. Once he pretended the gaslight on the stovetop was broken and had Keith light it for several days until he got Adam to come over and look at it, just for him to tell Keith Lance has been messing with him.

It was weirdly endearing, yet a little annoying. Right now, he kept snapping his fingers fondly and watched the gold light dance in Lance’s eyes.

He loved him. He loved Lance so much and sitting here at Shiro’s wedding, seeing them dance over each other’s shiny toed shoes and laugh between bubbly kisses made Keith’s heart float in his chest. He gripped Lance’s hand in a tight grip. Lance squeezed back.

Lance ended up dragging him onto the dance floor at some point in the evening, the sun dropping quickly in the sky. They danced to the 80s playlist that Adam and Shiro had set up, Lance losing his mind when “Never Gonna Give You Up” started playing, complete with an interpretive dance he performed for Keith in the middle of the dance floor. 

It was at sunset when Lance pulled Keith aside for some fresh air away from the party. Besides the circle of trees the main reception took place in, there were paths lined with floating lanterns and bleached rocks that lead them through the forest area to different look out spots and to the main barn the forest was owned by.They wandered around the paths for a while, champagne flutes emptied a long time ago and the space between them was warm, especially when they bumped shoulders. 

“I adore the little pumpkins they have set up around the dance floor, and the ugly gourds on the tables. Look.” Lance reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny, yellow gourd. “It was too cute, I couldn’t help myself.”

Keith reached into his own pocket and pulled out an orange one. “I understand.”

“I kind of like the fall wedding, but I’d want a summer wedding. On the beach, or overlooking it,” Lance mused. He’s talked about this before, a lot in fact. Keith basically already has Lance’s whole wedding plan down by memory. This was probably a hint. “I want white flowers and a white suit, and like, whatever color I go with.”

“How about just white?”

“Hm, nah. There’s gotta be something to it. Maybe red for love? Or purple?”

“What was Shiro debating on? Vermillion?”

“I don’t want a weird ass sounding color. . . okay, maybe cerulean.”

Keith laughed and nudged Lance with his shoulder. They came across a bench under a bright red tree overlooking a cliff to the gold and green valley below. They sat down and cuddled up, the pink and gold sky offering no warmth in the chilled mountain air. 

“What time do you leave tomorrow?” Keith asked. He gripped Lance’s lapel a little tighter.

“Three. Gotta get home and feed Blue,” Lance said. He buried his head into Keith’s neck and let out a heavy sigh. “I hate this.”

Keith knew exactly what he was talking about. “Yeah. I can probably visit weekend after next, but I’m a little tight on funds right now.”

Lance shook his head. “Don’t waste money coming to see me, I’d rather you stay and earn your keep.”

“But I  _ want  _ to go see you,” Keith huffed.

This was difficult. They’ve been dating for over a year now and they lived too far away from one another. It wasn’t really long distance per say, they were only two and a half hours away, but it was hard. Keith can’t drive, and Lance’s car was giving out on him. Last winter it snowed heavily in the mountain and made it impossible for Lance to see him in his dingy, little car. Over the summer it broke down and they missed their one year anniversary because it was stuck in repairs and Allura was visiting Coran with her car. Krolia barely managed to drive Keith to Lance’s by near midnight that night, but he didn’t want to stop what he had with Lance. He was getting his license thankfully, he already had a permit. Driving in the mountains made him nervous, but he was willing to do it all for Lance. 

They sat in a heavy silence after that, Lance rubbed circles into his arm and Keith placed kisses every so often onto the top of his head. 

“Hey, Lance?” Keith asked. The sun was touching the horizon, just starting to dip beyond the mountain range. Lance was absolutely radiant in the dying light. Lance hummed in acknowledgment. 

Keith disentangled themselves and stood in front of Lance. He sat up straight and eyed Keith in front of him, shielding his eyes from the sun directly behind Keith. He scooted over a little to stand between Lance and the sun, effectively shielding him from the light. He wondered of he was haloed in the gilded light.

“I’m tired of traveling around, planning to see each other and cancelling last minute because something comes up. I’m tired of driving back and forth, the moments before we have to get up and leave, not seeing each other for weeks at a time. I was spoiled during the summer when we were only in each other’s spaces, living in your house then my own.” Keith gulped. Lance sucked in a sharp breath. “I was spoiled with you, and now that you’re so far away all the time, I don’t know how to handle myself. I went twenty-four years without you, and I can’t stand going twenty-four seconds without you anymore.

“Lance Serrano-McClain,” Keith fell to one knee, took Lance’s hands in his own and stared up at him earnestly. His heart was in his throat, his hands were definitely damp with sweat, but he met Lance’s wide, blue eyes flushed with the sun and didn’t dare back down. “Will you move in with me?”

Lance took a shuddering breath. “I thought you were gonna dig up another ring and ask me to marry you, holy shit! Way to give a guy a heart attack!”

Keith cracked a smile, a laugh bubbled in his chest like the champagne they drank, his heart raced a mile a second. “Please don’t avoid the question, I’m actually going to die I’m so nervous.”

“Oh, uh, of fucking course yes,” Lance said, a smile gracing his beautiful face. “I was gonna ask you tomorrow before I left, but way to beat me to the punch.”

“You get to ask next time, how’s that?” Keith smirked. Lance laughed, face flushed at the implications, and stood to pull Keith into a hug and a tender kiss. 

“I’m a little glad you didn’t pop that question. Only an asbolute dick head would do that on his brother’s wedding day,” Lance murmured into Keith’s neck.

“I could have, it would have been easier because we could have told everyone now to mark their calendar instead of wasting time on wedding announcements.” Keith softly kissed Lance’s cheek, then made a trail of delicate kisses to his mouth. He pulled something deep from his chest, pulled Lance closer to hold him tight. He’s going to wake up with Lance by his side all the time now, they’re going to have breakfast together every day and come home to one another. He felt wings in his chest flutter in joy, his head felt light. 

They went back to the wedding and announced to Shiro and Adam first that they’re officially going to move in together. 

It was two years later during their wedding anniversary at a picnic did Lance drop to his knee and asked Keith under a willow tree, glimmering in the sunset they always called their own, did Lance asked Keith to marry him with a silver ring inlaid with a dark garnet. Shiro punched him in the shoulder for stealing the spotlight. Keith said yes and pulled out his own ring he had bought months before and presented a ring inlaid with abalone. They cried and celebrated the rest of the night, waking up the next morning hungover, but with wedding bands on their ring fingers, the metal clanking when they went to hold hands.

The following summer they had a wedding on the moonstone beach, wearing matching white suits and sappy grins. 

And when they had their first dance, Keith felt his shoulder grow damp under Lance’s heavy head. He tangled a hand into his hair and held him tighter. 

In some twisted way, he wanted to thank Haggar for bringing him Lance. She was long dead, executed for her crimes, but she had taken Keith to the love of his life. He gazed up at the star strewn sky, the night finally pushed past the golden haze of his youth, and he traced the glimmering stars that told so many stories, and his was right here in his arms. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cant BELIEVE i finished a long fic what the fuck i havent completely a multichapter fic since my one piece oc days. thanks again!!! comments and kudos are GREAT.  
> main tumblr: canadiangothstalker  
> art tumblr: mirai-eats  
> twitter: mirai_eats

**Author's Note:**

> here r my handles pls come yell at me. no dont talk to me, just fucking scream  
> part 2 is done, and part 3 is almost done and i should post them tomorrow and oct 31 consecutively so look out for that  
> main tumblr: canadiangothstalker  
> art tumblr: mirai-eats  
> twitter: mirai_eats


End file.
